Alex Bowman is in the final season of a three-year contract extension with Hendrick Motorsports as driver of the team’s No. 48 Chevrolet.
What comes next — whether that includes a return in 2027 or otherwise — has yet to be determined. But sorting next year’s plans hasn’t been Bowman’s No. 1 priority, he said in a Tuesday teleconference.
RELATED: Cup standings | Chicagoland schedule
Entering Sunday’s eero 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, Bowman sits 29th in the points standings with two top fives and three top 10s, all after missing four races earlier this spring due to vertigo. His future plans have not been announced, but his focus remains on righting the No. 48 team’s performance in the second half of the NASCAR Cup Series season.
“I’m just trying to do my part to try to help (Hendrick Motorsports) be the best it can be right now and obviously trying to get things turned back around on the 48 side of things,” Bowman said Tuesday. “But yeah, definitely not — I don’t feel like I’m racing for my job or anything like that by any means. Really just kind of week-to-week focused on trying to get pointing back in the right direction.”
Bowman, who finished 10th last week at Sonoma Raceway for his best finish since a third-place result at Texas Motor Speedway in May, added he doesn’t have a specific timeline set to solidify plans for 2027 or beyond, but discussions behind the scenes have continued at Hendrick.
“It’s been interesting,” Bowman said. “Obviously, we’ve had a lot of different conversations and kind of trying to figure out what the best thing to do is, so I would say sooner rather than later, for sure. But really, I guess I haven’t really thought about (it). Like, it hasn’t been the first thing on my mind by any means, and really just been working hard at trying to get things pointed in the right direction. But definitely, (I) think sooner rather than later.”
After missing races in three of the past five seasons for medical reasons, Bowman says he feels OK after 11 races back from his most recent absence. But his results have also left him disappointed, scoring just two wins since the Next Gen debuted in 2022 and winless since the Fourth of July weekend at the Chicago Street Course in 2024.
No matter what comes next, Bowman is carefully considering his options both for himself and his current team.
“I think for me, I just want to make the right decision for myself, I guess,” Bowman said. “And yeah, certain things haven’t gone how we want them to go. And honestly, I’m at a point in my life where I’m super blessed to be in a position where I don’t have to do this forever. So I’ve just got to make the right decision, and I want Hendrick Motorsports to make the right decision and everybody to be on board with whatever we do. I think I have a lot of faith in Rick (Hendrick, team owner) and Jeff (Gordon, vice chairman) and everybody to guide all of us the right way, and whatever happens, happens.”
Bowman returns to Chicagoland on Sunday (6 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) as the track’s most recent winner. That, of course, was seven years ago, when the Cup Series last visited in 2019. That day, Bowman battled his future teammate Kyle Larson for victory, losing the lead and snagging it right back in the closing laps. That marked Bowman’s first of eight Cup wins so far.
“It feels like a really long time ago,” Bowman said. “I’m definitely looking forward to getting back there.”
Like most of the Cup field, Bowman has no experience driving around the track in a Next Gen car. But Larson was Chevrolet’s representative for a Goodyear tire test earlier this spring, turning laps around the oval’s aging and worn pavement and relaying his feedback to his teammate.
MORE: In-Season Challenge update after Round 1
“I just think it’s going to be tricky with the Next Gen car,” Bowman said. “That place is slick, so you’re going to be sliding around a lot, which the Next Gen car is just inherently hard to slide much without it getting away from you. And it’s very bumpy, and Next Gen is tough through the bumps, so it’ll be interesting to see how the track widens out, what grooves are and aren’t at play because of the bumps and see what works.
“It’s kind of fun to go to a place without a huge notebook. I’ll be in the sim tomorrow morning, so I don’t really have any idea yet on how it’s going to drive other than talking to Kyle from the test, but yeah, looking forward to the challenge.”
Speaking of challenge — Bowman earned the ultimate upset in the In-Season Challenge Sunday at Sonoma by ousting No. 1 seed Tyler Reddick, allowing the No. 32 seed Bowman to advance into Round 2. Reddick suffered mechanical issues that led to a last-place finish while Bowman earned a much-needed top 10. After making a run into the third round in 2025, Bowman will go head-to-head with No. 16 Austin Cindric at Chicagoland, and he’s definitely conscious of the $1 million prize that goes to the winner.
“Yeah, certainly pays pretty well to win, so we want to do the best we can and try to give ourselves the best shot at doing that,” Bowman said. “I think we probably got a little bit of a gift with the 45 (Reddick) having an issue, but we also went to Sonoma and put together a good, solid day. So yeah, think we’re plenty capable. Obviously, we went pretty far last year. Hopefully, we can do that again and try to make something happen, but at the same time, just really focused on trying to get back to normalcy on the 48 side of things.”
For Bowman, that “normalcy” he feels his team is missing entails both speed and results after a two-month stretch where “nothing went our way.” Sonoma was a step in the right direction, but the question remains whether the No. 48 team can find its footing once again as a regular contender on ovals.
“I think it’s just really easy to be a little bit off and it to look like you’re way off with how small the margins are in the Cup Series,” Bowman said. “And like I said before, once you get stuck in group one and qualify early, you end up qualifying bad, you have bad pit stalls, so then your race suffers, and you can’t get any track position, and then you’re stuck in group one the next week. And it just continues and continues. So trying to get out of that cycle and get back to group two and be back on the right side of things, qualifying later so you have a better pit-stall selection, and kind of inherently — like the group (two) cars are just always faster, right? You can watch the first session and take data from whoever is on your team in that session or whatever and go from there.
“As buried as we are in points, it’s really hard for us to get into group two, so I think that’s the biggest hurdle that we have, and yeah, good days fix that. So just need to continue to have good days.”