October 4, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Out of the race and out of the Playoffs--Alex Bowman sidelined for second straight week

Rick Hendrick's optimism proved to be unfounded.

Hendrick had hoped Alex Bowman would be ready to return to the No. 48 Chevrolet this weekend at the Charlotte Roval. 

However, following a medical evaluation on Tuesday in Charlotte, Bowman will remain on the sidelines due to concussion symptoms.

Bowman, 29, wrecked 97 laps into the NASCAR Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway on Sept. 25—his second accident in as many races. Following repairs to the No. 48 Chevrolet at Texas, Bowman soldiered on to a 29th-place result. His concussion symptoms manifested later in the week and he elected to skip last weekend’s activities at Talladega Superspeedway.

“Alex’s health is our first priority,” said Jeff Andrews, president and general manager of Hendrick Motorsports. “We’re focused on supporting his recovery and seeing him back in his race car when the time is right. Alex has a long career ahead of him, so we will invest the necessary time and take our guidance from medical experts. We’re putting no pressure on him to return before he’s 100 percent ready.”

Noah Gragson will continue to sub for Bowman. At Talladega, he qualified a career-best seventh before finishing 19th. The Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway will mark Gragson’s first Cup start on a road course. In 20 road course starts in the NASCAR’s Xfinity Series, Gragson has top 10 results in 17 races.

Bowman is the second Playoff driver to be benched during the postseason with a head injury. Kurt Busch sustained a head injury during a qualifying wreck in the new car at Pocono Raceway on July 23. He hasn’t raced a Cup car since.

Bowman’s crew chief Greg Ives took the accident personally. Ives, who holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering, was crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr. prior to working with Bowman. In 2016, Ives shared Earnhardt’s career-changing decision to climb out of the No. 88 Chevrolet after multiple concussions.

“Ultimately, it's my job to try to make sure that my driver, Alex, is put in the safest situation possible,” Ives said. “So, for me, decisions I made, probably throughout Texas race, ultimately caused us to crash. Thinking that I could have done something different, that's how I look at things. I look in the mirror before I look out into the crowd.

“Being through this before with Dale, we talked about it a little bit on his download show and how I felt like a lot of his accident or concussion was put on me. So that's just my nature. That's who I am. And no matter what anybody else says, that's ultimately what I'm going to think and I'm going to hope to help improve it.”

Despite his experience with Earnhardt, Ives didn’t anticipate Bowman going down a similar path.

“Everybody has heard or talked about the rear impacts being a little bit greater,” Ives said. “For us, just trying to put the best race car around him and safety equipment. We saw what happened with Kurt. Just trying to go from there.”

NASCAR is scheduled to continue crash testing the new car on Wednesday in Ohio. The sanctioning body will also meet with Cup teams later this week. Ives is determined to help the sanctioning body find a solution to the current issue with the rear of the car

“We’ve got to come together,” Ives added. “We can’t continue to think it's one individual’s fault or one sanctioning body’s fault or one race team’s fault. We’ve got to come together as a group of drivers, as executives, as team owners, as you know crew chiefs, and say, ‘Hey, what can we do to help make this better?’

“Understanding the problem I think is clear, solving the problem is where it starts to get a little cloudy. The common expense of it, what the right move is and so, that's where I like to see it continue to go. When you have a car of this nature, development, it slows down quickly compared to when a race team had it. We used to cut frame rails out and cut clips off in a matter of a day and put it back together.

“That's the cumbersome part of what we're facing right now but I think there are ways for us to get better without a lot of expense. The timeframe has to be shorter on these type of developments. Time is running out (for 2022) but if it's even for one race it's better than none.”