RICHMOND, Va. — These are not the close bonds that teammates would hope to have.
Hendrick Motorsports teammates Alex Bowman and William Byron placed a close 23rd and 24th, respectively, in the Federated Auto Parts 400, both four laps down after disheartening runs Saturday night at Richmond Raceway. The result also made them tightly connected on the Monster Energy Series Playoffs cut-off line — Byron two points to the good; Bowman two points in arrears with one race left in the postseason’s opening round.
RELATED: Full race results
Neither driver quite had the proper pace to recover from first-half trouble. Byron’s finish matched his worst of the season; Bowman hadn’t been that far back on the results sheet since Phoenix in March. To compound the day, Bowman’s issues came with a side dish of drama after a tit-for-tat battle of bumpers with fellow Chevrolet driver Austin Dillon.
“He just races dumb, but it’s Richmond. It’s hard to race not dumb here sometimes,” Bowman said. “I don’t know. He drove me all the way to the inside wall on the restart and then drove off into (turn) three and just cleaned us out, so frustrating, but that’s short-track racing and you’ll have it.”
They did, with a little extra edge. Bowman and Dillon raced hard shortly after the restart to begin Stage 2, with Byron also catching some of the contact in a Turn 1 battle. Dillon, taking offense to the two cars touching, returned the favor with gusto in Turn 3, sending Bowman’s No. 88 Chevrolet sideways.
Dillon quickly vacated the .75-mile track post-race, but crew chief Danny Stockman Jr. said that team owner Richard Childress had recently urged his driver and grandson to take no guff.
“I don’t know where he was going on that restart and he chopped us, got in our left-rear and caught our left-rear tire there,” Stockman told NASCAR.com. “To be quite honest, I know RC’s been getting on Austin about retaliating with these guys. He ain’t gonna get pushed around. It’s as simple as it was way too early in the race to try to be chopping us in the left-rear and we should’ve wrecked. We just can’t be dealing with that stuff.”
Both Hendrick drivers continued, but neither was able to keep pace with the four-car armada of Joe Gibbs Racing, which led laps at a dominant clip. By the time the second stage ended at the halfway mark, Bowman and Byron were both two laps down.
“We were really off,” Byron said. “I don’t know. It seemed like it would hold on OK for the first 40 laps of a run and then I was just sideways all around the track, turning to the right.”
The Hendrick duo will need a turnaround in their back yard for next weekend’s Round of 16 finale at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course/oval combo. But under the post-race glare of bringing up the caboose among playoff drivers under Saturday night’s lights, the Richmond moment still stung.
“We really did it to ourselves,” Bowman said. “Just really bad since we unloaded and never got a handle on it. It’s not for a lack of effort. All the guys worked really hard and we came here wanting to have a race car that turned really well all day and we got that. Just had no drive from the time we unloaded to the checkered flag there, so it’s really frustrating. Just a crappy day, didn’t execute well to top it off, but we’ll go to the Roval and our road-course cars are really good. We were good there last year. Hopefully, we’ll be alright.”
