MEXICO CITY — Through clenched teeth and a grimacing face, Alex Bowman climbed out of his race car after scoring his first top-five finish in more than a month since Kansas Speedway.
For Bowman and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team, Sunday’s Viva Mexico 250 at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez was more than a strong points day — it was a much-needed breakthrough after weeks of pain, both physical and competitive.
“I mean, after the last couple months, it feels good to give this Ally 48 team a run they deserve, right?” Bowman told NASCAR.com. “We’ve had a lot of fast race cars and had days that didn’t go our way. We’ve had issues. We’ve had times that I’ve crashed the car. Just to get them a good run after everything this week, and as hard as they had to work to get me here, just with everything that I had going on, I just really appreciate all their support and glad to get them a good finish.”
Bowman has been nursing a back injury suffered in a hard crash at Michigan International Speedway. While the pain has been manageable at times, it’s also been a constant presence — and it showed in Mexico City, where the 2.42-mile, 15-turn circuit demanded the Arizonian wheelman to endure discomfort for 100 laps.
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“I’ve got an appointment to get stretched out here in about five minutes,” Bowman added. “So straight to that and a bunch of PT all week. Just trying to get my back under control. It certainly hasn’t been fun, but it’s one of those things. It’s not like a skeletal injury or anything. It’s just muscular and that stuff can be super painful, but also, if you can fight through it, it’s pretty rewarding.”
Bowman started 29th in a field of 37, and thanks to a well-timed strategy call from crew chief Blake Harris to pit on Lap 62, that gave the team a slim window of opportunity to fight for track position.
“We were watching a bunch of weather, right?” Harris explained. “It was still a little too wet the original time there when we pitted for slicks. But we felt our best shot was to flip the stage at that point. We took the slicks early and got the track position early, and then really that kind of put us in a scenario where if we continued to stay out, we were going to be out of fuel before some of the other guys.”
As it turned out, the yellow flew just in time.
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“We pitted, and that caution came out a lap and a half later,” Harris said. “That couldn’t have been any better for us. That got us in the fuel window to the end, and really just got us in a good spot to be able to bring home a top five.”
The 48 car didn’t have winning speed in the closing laps as eventual race winner Shane van Gisbergen skedaddled to a two-second lead soon after the restart, but Bowman managed the race smartly. He briefly battled Christopher Bell and teammate Chase Elliott — who rounded out the podium — and preserved his position rather than overdriving the car and potentially giving up more spots.
“I had burnt the rear tires off of it pretty bad,” Bowman admitted. “Started locking up the rears a lot on entry under the brakes. Didn’t want to get too much front brake in it and lock the fronts up. When they said, like, 16 to go, I’m like, ‘holy cow, it’s a long way.’ I could have raced Chase super hard and cost us a bunch of time. Just tried to be efficient with it in hopes that he could go get HMS a better finish than I was going to be able to, and not let the guys behind us catch up either.”
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The run comes at a crucial time in the season as Bowman and the No. 48 team look to stay in the playoff conversation. After a stretch of three straight finishes of 29th or worse, Sunday’s result marked a potential turning point.
“Honestly, we as a team needed to flip the script on what it’s been for the last five or six weeks for us,” Harris said. “I feel like we’ve had fast race cars. I feel like a lot of stuff that’s happened has not been in our control. So for us to have a few things fall right, for us to get the track position like that, for him to be in the pain that he’s been in since that wreck last week and come and just put on that performance means a lot to this entire team.”
Bowman now heads to Pocono Raceway (Sun., 2 p.m. ET, Prime Video, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), a track where he owns a win and five top 10s at and believes he has a real shot to contend again there and later on with more road courses on deck; he will have a chance to defend his Chicago Street Race win in July.
“I feel like road-course racing has become a big strong suit for the 48 team,” Bowman said. “I think we have a shot to win, I mean, going to Pocono, we ran third there last year. So yeah, just excited to get things pointed in the right direction after two months of hell.”