Bowman ‘bummed’ he didn’t have more at COTA in the end

Alex Bowman turned a quiet day at Circuit of the Americas into a fourth-place finish in the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix.

“I feel we had a good weekend, overall, minus qualifying,” Bowman said. “All week, we’ve wanted our car to hang on to the rear tires longer and we fought that a little bit in the race still. I thought the second-to-last run we got it pretty good, and we short-pitted to try and get track position and came out right in the middle of a bunch of guys still on older tires and beat the rear tires up real bad on low air.”

Bowman qualified 17th but had an average running position of ninth Sunday afternoon. The No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team called Bowman to pit road for the final time under green flag conditions with 25 laps to go. It was a lap earlier than the leaders (Bowman was running fourth) and allowed him to leapfrog Ross Chastain during the pit cycle.

The field fully cycled through with 18 laps to go, and Bowman was second to teammate and eventual winner William Byron. But the damage had been done fighting through lapped traffic, and Bowman faded over the final laps.

“I just feel like I hurt my stuff for that last run pretty badly in those first two laps (after the pit stop),” Bowman said. “Bummed that happened, but we had a good Ally Camaro. I felt like we maximized everything aside from that little bit there.