Alex Bowman’s season of woe continued Sunday at Michigan. And frankly, you’d be hard-pressed to find another Cup driver with worse luck this side of a black cat driving under a ladder with a broken mirror in the back seat.
On Lap 67 of the FireKeepers Casino 400 — just as everyone was settling into Stage 2 — Bowman’s No. 48 Chevrolet became an innocent bystander in a moment of unintended slapstick between Austin Cindric and Cole Custer. The two tangled ahead of him, and Bowman, running 29th at the time, suddenly found himself heading nose-first into the Turn 2 wall like a pigeon into a window. Chase Briscoe and Daniel Suárez got swept up too, but it was Bowman who took the worst of it.
The crash triggered a red flag, clean-up crews swarmed the track, and safety workers sprinted to Bowman’s battered Chevy. But somehow, incredibly, he climbed out, walked to the ambulance under his own power, and later emerged from the infield care center with all bones seemingly intact.
Which, considering his recent medical history, is nothing short of miraculous.
In 2023, Bowman fractured a vertebra in a sprint car race at 34 Raceway. That knocked him out of three Cup races and the All-Star event. The year before that, he missed five races after a concussion at Texas. If anyone deserves a loyalty card at the infield care center, it’s Alex Bowman.
After Sunday’s hit, Bowman summed it up with the air of a man who has seen this film before — and still hates the ending.
“It just looked like the No. 2 (Austin Cindric) got into the No. 41 (Cole Custer) or he was in a bad aero spot, something like that,” Bowman said. “The No. 41 got loose and at that point, being on the outside, when they get into you, you’re just along for the ride. Really quickly turned the car into the outside wall and it was a massive crash. Hate it for our No. 48 Ally Chevrolet team and everyone at Hendrick Motorsports. We just have to keep digging. It’s been a really bad two months for us, but we just have to keep working hard.”
Bowman entered the weekend 12th in the standings, which isn’t terrible — unless you’ve watched how he’s gotten there: through sheer endurance, duct tape, and prayer.
With NASCAR heading to Mexico City next weekend and road courses looming, Bowman says there’s still hope.
“We’ve had a lot of speed and a lot of good race cars. Obviously today, we were off from where we needed to be,” he said. “But just the support that we have from Rick (Hendrick), Jeff (Gordon) and everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, they’ll give us the tools we need to get turned back around. We just needed to get pointed back in the right direction. We’re a much better race team than this.”
No argument there. But first, the racing gods may need to stop using Bowman as their personal chew toy.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.