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December 18, 2024

Alex Bowman looks to kick-start 2025 where he ended 2024: ‘Hopefully we can start there as a baseline’


In a year full of chatter surrounding the safety of his employment at Hendrick Motorsports, Alex Bowman responded with a career year.

Bowman, winner of the Chicago Street Race in July in the No. 48 Ally Chevrolet, netted eight top-five finishes in 2024 to match a career-high, collected a career-best 17 top 10s and notched a career-tops 28 lead-lap finishes. To boot, half of the 10 playoff races resulted in top 10s for the veteran racer, ending the campaign on a much-needed upswing.

“Hopefully, we can start there as a baseline, right?” Bowman said on Nov. 22 ahead of the NASCAR Awards. “I think that’s the biggest thing is trying to operate at that that level to start and have that be our baseline and go up from there. So yeah, excited to see what 2025 holds. I think we did a really good job to end the season, and looking forward to it.”

MORE: 2025 Cup schedule | Recap Bowman’s 2024 season

To finish strong in 2024 was a mighty contrast to how his 2023 season ended. That season was marred by inconsistency, asterisked by a mid-spring back injury that ousted him from the car and resulted in poor finishes, especially as the year wound to a close. In 2023, Bowman finished 12th or worse in seven of the final eight races — three of those landing 28th or worse in his first winless season since 2018. All of that followed a 2022 effort in which Bowman was sidelined for five races as he recovered from a concussion.

“I don’t know if I questioned myself, but I think definitely after two back-to-back bigger injuries, it’s easy to get in that spot, right?” Bowman said. “Like, it wasn’t much fun, right? Especially, we were so good before I broke my back, and came back and we were good for two weeks and then we were just terrible the rest of the season. Like, it was crazy how bad we were at places that I’m typically really good at even. So that was really frustrating.

“This year, it didn’t start the year great, but we turned it around pretty quickly. So yeah, I mean, I think we’ve done a lot of the right things. I think just kind of being on the other side of it, it definitely feels good.”

Alex Bowman competes in a NASCAR Cup Series race at Phoenix.
Jared C. Tilton | Getty Images

Indeed, there was a bounce-back quality to Bowman’s 2024 season, kicking the season off with a runner-up finish in the Daytona 500 and finishing inside the top 10 three times in a four-race stretch early in the spring. Coupled with his end-of-year upturn was critical heading into the offseason.

“I think getting some confidence back that maybe it’s not me and maybe I can actually do this was nice,” Bowman said. “I think we’re in a good spot as a team, and I think we have some positive things coming that are going to be better.”

But inconsistency was still a flaw of the No. 48 team, and that is top of mind for the Arizona native heading into his eighth season at Hendrick Motorsports.

“We just need to figure out how to put the whole year together, right?” Bowman said. “I mean, the guy that won the championship (Joey Logano) wasn’t great for most of the year, right? But the drama on his side of things is much less than the drama on my side of things. So yeah, now he’s a champion. The system makes it weird. But from optics side of things, we need to run well all year. We want to run well all year, and yeah, trying to figure out how to make it happen.”

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