JOLIET, Il. — Alex Bowman fell short of his second consecutive win at Chicagoland Speedway on Sunday night, but he still climbed from the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet with a smile on his face.
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After the year he's had, he's perfectly happy with a top-five finish at the track where he scored his first career Cup Series win.
"We just needed a good, normal day," Bowman said after the race. "It feels like a win with how the season has gone, but we just have to keep digging every week."
The race at Chicagoland Speedway served as the No. 48 team's most complete performance of the season. They started 12th, scored three stage points, and ended the day fifth overall. Bowman left Chicagoland with 35 points, his second-highest total of the season.
Equally important is that he and the No. 48 team kept up with the track changes throughout the night. They made the car better as the sun set instead of continuing to struggle with handling.
"I was pretty happy with (the car), especially in stage three," Bowman said. "I think those few runs in stage three, I was really happy with it. So yeah, it's a balance here, because you take off one way and then you build completely the opposite way.
"So you want to turn really well on restarts, but if you turn well on restarts, then you're screwed on green flag stops. So just trying to get all that right and have the balance where you need to at the end was crucial, and I feel like we were pretty good with it."
The Arizona native has been put through the wringer this season, his ninth at Hendrick Motorsports. He crashed in the Daytona 500 and finished 40th. He then exited the car midway through the Circuit of the Americas after experiencing vertigo symptoms.
Bowman then missed four races while recovering from vertigo. He crashed at Bristol Motor Speedway, his first race back in action.
A pair of third-place finishes at Talladega Superspeedway and Texas Motor Speedway appeared to put Bowman back on the right track, but he then posted four finishes of 25th or worse in the next six races. He fell to 33rd in the Cup Series standings.
A 10th-place finish at Sonoma Raceway stopped the proverbial bleeding for Bowman and the No. 48 team. The fifth-place finish at Chicagoland Speedway then kept the team moving in the right direction.
Next up is Atlanta, which presents an opportunity for Bowman. He can try to score more points and continue building momentum. He just has to avoid the incidents that make up what he calls the "speedway tax."
"We crashed in the spring," Bowman said. "Can't remember if it was early or not. I don't think it was our fault. So, not crashing is probably top of the list.
"I feel like you have to pay a speedway tax. Like, to get good speedway finishes, you have to have bad speedway finishes, and we had two bad speedway finishes, and then we ran third at Talladega. So they still owe us one good speedway finish."
