Alex Bowman's promising start from the front row Sunday ended early with a crumpled No. 88 Chevrolet at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Bowman's Hendrick Motorsports entry suffered an apparent tire issue heading into Turn 3 on the 1.5-mile track, skidding into the outside retaining wall and collecting Casey Mears' No. 13 Chevy in its wake. The incident brought out the race's second yellow flag on Lap 62 of a scheduled 334 in the Bank of America 500 and ended the 23-year-old's day quite early.
Both cars were officially out of the race. Bowman was evaluated and released unhurt from the infield care center.
"They knew we were here, that is all that matters," said Bowman, who was in third place at the time of the incident. "There is nothing more I can do, nothing more anybody on the race team can do. They all do a great job and did everything right, just bad luck."
Bowman, who started second in the 40-car field, was making his fifth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start of the season as a substitute for Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is out for the remainder of the 2016 season due to a concussion. Earnhardt was at the track atop the pit box of the No. 88 and looked on as the race car got pulled to the garage area.
Mears started 29th and failed to make major gains with an ill-handling car in the early going. "It's too bad he didn't put us out of our misery there," Mears said of his contact with Bowman. "We were having a rough start of it. We were just kind of hanging on and actually those guys were going by us."