Rick Hendrick star Alex Bowman frustrated after playoff heartbreak ends his streak of first-round survival

The night race at the Bristol Motor Speedway was a do-or-die event for Alex Bowman in the context of advancing into the Round of 12 in the playoffs. However, the Hendrick Motorsports driver failed on this mission as he missed out on continuing his streak of successfully making it into the second round of the postseason, leaving him frustrated.

Heading into the race weekend, Bowman knew that a win to advance into the Round of 12 was seemingly his only realistic chance of continuing his first-round survival streak. While a 15th-place start was not a great start on his pursuit of victory, he soon started making moves up the road.

Moreover, his performance behind the wheel of the No. 48 made him one of the contenders for the race win as he led five laps of the race, along with a third-place finish in Stage 2. But this dream of moving into the Round of 12 remained a dream only, as his eighth-place finish saw him 10 points short of the cutline.

Sharing his thoughts on missing out on moving into the second round of the playoffs, he said (via Bob Pockrass):

"I think, I'm proud of the effort today. Certainly, we've never gone out in a first round. So that's frustrating, but after the last two weeks, just top-10 and kind of being pointed in the right direction feels good. I mean, it's easy to be frustrated but I feel like we did all we could today, and looking back on it, that's kind of all you can ask for."

Meanwhile, Alex Bowman was one of the two drivers to advance into the postseason despite not scoring any victories, a feat which he achieved on the basis of his consistent results.

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How could Alex Bowman have improved on his performance in Bristol?

Hendrick Motorsports' Alex Bowman at the 2025 Go Bowling at The Glen race weekend - Source: Imagn

While winning the night race at Bristol seems to be the easy answer, Alex Bowman once looked to be in the fight for the victory. A total of 14 drivers led the 500-lap race at different intervals, but Bowman was a man on a mission.

However, the tire woes around the short oval had caught up to him. The 32-year-old particularly struggled on the tires that had already been used in stints earlier, as he said (via NASCAR):

"I don’t think you can really point at something that cost us. Being out of tires at the end isn’t good, right? 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. Our restarts on stickers, or even when we put our scuffs on, it was fine, but cycle tires were really bad."

Bowman can now only compete for the positions between 13th-16th. While he is currently the highest among the last four playoff drivers, he does not have a massive advantage over his peers.