“When You Don’t Have a Job..”: Alex Bowman on High Uncertainty in NASCAR Career During 2023 Low

Alex Bowman suffered a broken back last season which caused him to miss crucial races and ultimately the Cup Series playoffs. Now that those trying times are in the past and he is looking to stage a successful rebound in 2024, the HMS driver looks back and judges which of the lows that have hit his career so far were the toughest to face. Before he got to be the full-time driver of the #48 Hendrick Motorsports car, Bowman worked with the team as a reserve driver. This role put him behind the simulator program for much of 2016 and seldom behind an actual race car. Self-admittedly, this was one of the hardest times for Bowman considering the uncertainty it carried.

Talking to the media after the Atlanta race, the driver was faced with the question of which he thought was tougher, what he went through last season, or the uncertainties that came with being in a simulator program. Noting that he had the support of his sponsor and team behind him last year, which made recovering from the injury a tad bit easier, he ruled that the uncertain times were worse.

In his words, “When you don’t have a job, it’s certainly tougher. My career had a lot of uncertainty at times and a lot of times that I didn’t know what was going to come next. (…) Yeah, those uncertain times are definitely worse.” 

Notably, during the 2016 season, Bowman replaced Dale Jr. in the #88 car when the latter had to sit out after suffering a concussion. Splitting duties with 4X Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon, Bowman outperformed significantly with three top-10 finishes. He would later take over the #88 car full-time in the 2018 season.

Alex Bowman heads to Las Vegas hoping for redemption after 2023 crash

Bowman has now gone two entire seasons without finding his way to the victory lane. The last time he won was at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas track. He’d beat his teammate Kyle Larson and scored the seventh win of his career then. Following a long wait for the eighth, he now heads to the venue where he last took the spoils home.

Driving the #48 Camaro, he has a 22-1 odds of winning the Pennzoil 400. The 400-miler will be the first non-drafting race of the season and it will present an opportunity for Hendrick Motorsports to get its tenth win at Vegas since 2001. It will also be the first of the back-to-back west coast races with the next scheduled to be run at the Phoenix Raceway.