Jeff Gordon’s bold NASCAR playoff prediction – Sports News
Heading into the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, racing legend and Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon had high hopes for the motive force of the No. 48 Chevrolet, Alex Bowman.
“If you just look at the points they’ve been scoring, where they’ve been running in the field, man, don’t be surprised if they go deeper than anybody anticipates in the playoffs,” Gordon instructed SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, regardless of Bowman’s failure to achieve victory lane this season.
Now, simply three races later, Bowman’s title push is over following an error-laden Round of 16 run. The 32-year-old kicked off his playoffs with a Thirty first-place end on the Cook Out Southern 500, thanks in no small half to a 40-second pit stop courtesy of air gun points, earlier than but more pit street issues value him dearly a week later at the Enjoy Illinois 300, the place he crossed the road in twenty sixth.
With Bowman under the cutoff line, Hendrick opted to behave fast, swapping out 4 members of Bowman’s pit crew for the Bristol Night Race on Saturday with these of Spire Motorsports’ Carson Hocevar. But whereas he averted any pit stop calamities during the Bass Pro Shops Night Race, it wasn’t enough to save lots of Bowman’s season as he got here home in eighth, having led 5 laps.
Speaking to USA Network after the race, Bowman stated, “I don’t think you can really point at something that cost us. Being out of tires at the end isn’t good, right?
“And honestly, we just played the hand that we could and stayed out. But if I had to pick one thing, our cycle tire restarts were just really poor. I couldn’t go at all. Zero grip,” he continued.
“So, our restarts on stickers, or even when we put our qualifying scuff on and stuff, it was fine. But cycle tires were really bad.
“So, hats off to our whole Ally 48 team, they did a really good job throughout the course of the day, and trying to be better after a rough last two weeks, and I think we swung it in the right direction, and we can continue to do that for the next, what do we have, seven weeks left.
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“So we’ve just got to keep digging. Certainly sucks to not transfer but our back was against a wall coming in here. We knew it was going to be a tough thing to do.”
Bowman added that he stays assured that the No. 48 is “a plenty capable race team a lot of the time,” nonetheless, “The last two weeks we’ve just not been very good.”
“I thought those tracks would be a little tough for us, but not how they were. And then even coming here, we’re typically a good bit better than we were tonight and yesterday when we come here.
“So we have some work to do on our race cars, but everybody’s always working, getting better, and tires change and the field changes, so we’ve just got to keep digging to get better.”
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