Alex Bowman disappointed by playoff elimination, reveals what went wrong for No. 48 team at Bristol

After a disastrous start to the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, Alex Bowman knew he likely needed to win at Bristol to advance to the Round of 12. Bowman, at times, looked like he had the car to compete.

He finished eighth in the Bristol Night Race, ending the night 10 points below Austin Cindric for the final advance spot. With his playoff run over, Bowman spoke with NBC Sports about what was missing for the No. 48 team at Bristol.

“I don’t think you can really point at one thing 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,” Bowman said. “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.

“… Trying to be better after a rough last two weeks, and I think we swung it in the right direction, and we can continue to do that for the next [seven weeks]. We’ve just got to keep digging. It sucks to not transfer, but our back was against the wall coming in here. We knew it was going to be a tough thing to do. Not a terrible day for us, and we’ll keep digging.”

Alex Bowman good, but not good enough at Bristol

Bowman entered the race -35 below the cutline. Technically, there was a way for Bowman to get in on points, but it was going to take a lot of things to go his way. For a while, they did. Chase Elliott crashed out and Austin Cindric‘s car caught on fire late in the race. Bowman was just a point short of Cindric for the final advance spot late in Stage 3, but he had to come down pit road for tires. At the time, he was running second.

Bowman was at a tire disadvantage on the final restart and couldn’t get up with the leaders to race for the win. Given how his playoffs started with trouble on pit road dooming him, this was a step forward. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough.

“We’re a plenty capable race team a lot of the time,” Bowman said. “The last two weeks, we just have not been very good, right? I thought those tracks would be a little tougher for us, but not how they were. Even coming here, we’re typically a good bit better than we were tonight and yesterday when we come here. So, we have some work to do on our race cars. But everybody’s always working and getting better. The tire changes and the field changes.

“We just got to keep digging to get better. I think this summer, we were so fast every week that I’m a little surprised to be down on speed, but the guys work hard, and we’ll keep digging at it.”