Kevin Harvick criticizes 'fundamental mistakes' from Alex Bowman No. 48 team after Bristol elimination

Alex Bowman was eliminated from the playoffs during the final race of the Round of 16 at Bristol this past weekend. Despite a P8 finish, the No. 48 team came up ten points shy of advancing to the Round of 12.

Kevin Harvick believes it may highlight a bigger issue with Hendrick Motorsports. The team hasn’t had the speed we’re used to over the second half of the season, and Bowman’s elimination underscored that, even though he was the top-finishing car for the team in Tennessee.

“They haven’t had the speed in the opening round like we expected,” Harvick explained, via Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour. “I think when you look at the Hendrick cars right now, they just haven’t fired off with any speed anywhere we’ve been. I think there was a little bit of hope at St. Louis, at a track where they hadn’t run very well. But that was a tough first round. That was not what we expected. Especially—I mean, I picked Kyle Larson to win the race and he was nowhere to be found all day. And when you’re nowhere to be found at Bristol with Kyle Larson, you’re off.

“Then, you start pressing on everything when you’re behind. You’ve got to press on pit road speed. You’ve got to press on strategy. Just like the No. 48 did. They swung at the fence to try to make something happen at the end of that race. But I don’t know. It just seems the No. 48 team in general seems a little bit disorganized. A lot of mistakes put themselves in that position. They have the speed. I think the (Hendrick) drivers have done a decent job, but they’ve even had some speeding penalties, some issues throughout the year that have taken away from weekends where they had speed.

“We saw the debacle on pit road with pit guns not being plugged in or whatever the final conclusion was. But it was definitely an error in preparation and structural organization—organizational error in setting up what needed to be organized on the No. 48 pit box. Fundamental mistakes out of the No. 48 team. And it’s like we talk about all the time: don’t beat yourself. Don’t beat yourself. I think if you’re that group, you look at it and think, ‘Wow, we really just took ourselves out.’”

While Bowman is eliminated, Hendrick still has Kyle Larson, William Byron and Chase Elliott in the mix. Those three can certainly contend for the championship, but it remains to be seen if the team fixes their issues over the next couple of races.

If they don’t, Hendrick is in danger of having one of their more disappointing seasons in recent memory. At the moment, Joe Gibbs Racing is the class of the field, and the usual standard for the Cup Series in Hendrick is wondering where to go next.