Whereas Hendrick Motorsports teammates William Byron (two) and Kyle Larson have collectively gained three of the collection’ first six races, Bowman struggled with a three-race stretch of no end higher than 18th.
He snapped that streak with a strong fourth place end final week at Bristol and adopted it up with one other fourth Sunday at Circuit of the Americas.
Even higher was Bowman and his No. 48 Chevrolet staff put themselves in place late in Sunday’s race to contend for the win – a hopeful signal for a driver attempting to finish what’s now a 67-race winless streak.
Bowman’s staff was one of many first to hit pit highway Sunday for its ultimate inexperienced flag cease to tackle new tires and gas to make it to the end. The gamble put Bowman again out on the observe in second behind chief Byron.
Bowman appeared to make up floor on his teammate for a number of laps however ultimately he light again to fourth as he additionally was instructed by his staff he wanted to preserve gas as a precaution.
“I’m simply bummed,” Bowman mentioned after the race. “In all probability simply received caught out in site visitors after our final pit cease. It was a foul spot that I needed to run too onerous on low air and beat the rear tires up.
“Form of inched in on William for a bit, however then the rear tires simply went away. Yeah, undoubtedly needed to handle it some. Positively some tire fall-off right here.
“We had a very good day, simply sucks to come back up a pair brief once more.”
Nonetheless, Sunday’s end result was Bowman’s third prime 5 end within the season’s first six races. He’s already only one in need of his prime 5 complete for every of the previous two seasons (4). He’s additionally improved to eleventh within the collection standings.
Jeff Gordon, vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, mentioned he was glad to see Bowman and his staff start to faucet into their potential.
“When he will get on a roll, he will get his confidence up; there’s no telling what they’re able to doing,” Gordon mentioned. “I’m actually joyful for them. Two prime fives in a row. They’d had a pair tough weeks, in order that they wanted this.
“Hendrick Motorsports is hard, proper? 4 of the highest drivers and groups on the market, and there’s a whole lot of stress on you. In case you’re successful, there’s stress to proceed. Whenever you’re not successful otherwise you’re not on the similar stage as your teammates, there’s a ton of stress that you just received to get there.”
Gordon mentioned he believes Bowman excels finest at dealing with tough challenges and the rocky begin to the season after a formidable runner-up end within the Daytona 500 definitely introduced one.
“I’m going to go away right here and attempt to discover extra methods to actually problem him much more,” Gordon mentioned. “He’s an incredible race automotive driver. It simply takes the entire mixture.
“I believe his confidence within the automotive, particularly as soon as they dropped the inexperienced flag, it confirmed.”
