Alex Bowman shone under the lights on Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway, as the drama of the NASCAR XFINITY Series Playoffs fueled up during an action-packed Drive for the Cure 300 presented by Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina.
Bowman scored the first XFINITY Series victory of his career after a partnership between Hendrick Motorsports and Chip Ganassi Racing put the Arizona native in the No. 42 Chevrolet Camaro for his 51stcareer start. Sam Hornish Jr. finished second with Ryan Blaney third – two places short of a season sweep of XFINITY Series races at Charlotte. Austin Dillon and Brennan Poole completed the top five.
A dramatic cutoff race in the XFINITY Series Playoffs’ Round of 12 saw William Byron, Justin Allgaier, Elliott Sadler, Daniel Hemric, Cole Custer, Brennan Poole, Ryan Reed and Matt Tifft advance to the Round of 8.
WINNER ALEX BOWMAN (No. 42 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro): “I kept thinking those last few laps that the caution would come out. To get my first win here at my second home at Charlotte means so much. It’s been a long time since I’veraced. I was terrible on pit stops. I didn’t do a good job on pit road but I felt like our restarts were pretty good. It feels amazing to finally get us one. It’s a dream come true. I have to give thanks to everybody who has made this possible. To come here and be as competitive as we were, I was really pleased. We were too free if I let the car roll too long. And we were too tight if I was too strong punching the throttle. We just kept freeing it up there at the end. The car was really secure around other race cars, which was great on that last restart. With the horsepower we had, we were able to get a gap there before it got too tight.”
RUNNER-UP SAM HORNISH JR. (No. 12 PPG Ford Fusion): “I think if it had been anybody else other than my teammate or Bowman (race winner Alex Bowman) I would have been pretty disappointed tonight. The car was great. We needed long runs, and didn’t have any to start the race. We finally got our car adjusted where we thought it needed to be. On the last restart I got stuck on the bottom. I had to free the car up a bit there and it took me a little longer to get up there and the 42 got to make a lot of ground on us there. It was a bit of fighting for me to get back to second. I made the right rear tire mad and it took five or six laps there to get it back down and go back after it. It was just not enough time there at the end.”
CMS PR (CMS/HHP photo)
