After breaking a winless streak of more than two years on the streets of Chicago, Alex Bowman reveled in dispelling any and all notions that he didn't belong with mighty Hendrick Motorsports or that he wasn't made of the right stuff to win in Cup. With that narrative busted, a new one needs to develop: Alex Bowman is a legitimate championship contender in 2024 and should be treated as such.
From the time he finished second in the Daytona 500, Alex Bowman has had one of the best statistical seasons of any driver in Cup, and a third-place finish at Pocono gave him his 12th top 10, a mark tying him with teammate William Byron for the second-most of any driver this season. Bowman is also one of nine drivers to earn more than five top-five finishes this year, and while he's not a threat to win the regular-season championship at 10th in the points standings, he is assembling the sort of season that should make him relevant come the start of the Round of 16 of the playoffs in September -- and arguably beyond that.
Just another solid day from @Alex_Bowman (P3).
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 14, 2024
This is his sixth top five of 2024, the most he's had since eight in 2021. pic.twitter.com/pHDyT7k3Lh
Thanks to his Chicago win and a third-place at Pocono, Bowman has launched his way up the CBS Sports NASCAR Power Rankings, sitting fourth this week just behind Tyler Reddick, Pocono winner Ryan Blaney and regular-season championship leader Chase Elliott.
Here's a look at CBS Sports' latest NASCAR Power Rankings:
| Rank | Driver | Change | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tyler Reddick | Tyler Reddick is one of three drivers in the awkward position of having won on the Indy Road Course, but not being able to claim that they've won on the Indianapolis oval. Reddick's only Brickyard 400 start came as a rookie in 2020, when he finished eighth. | ||
| 2 | Ryan Blaney | Like his ties to the Indianapolis 500, Ryan Blaney's car owner Roger Penske's ties to the Brickyard 400 run far deeper than simply owning the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Penske himself actually spotted for Rusty Wallace in the inaugural Brickyard 400 back in 1994. | ||
| 3 | Chase Elliott | Chase Elliott has celebrated victory at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway before, as he was a child in Victory Lane when his father won the Brickyard 400 in 2002. The Elliotts have a chance to become the first father-son duo to win the Brickyard 400 if Chase can get it done Sunday. | ||
| 4 | Alex Bowman | Let's illustrate for a moment how far Alex Bowman has come in his Cup career. In 2014, Bowman finished 40th in his very first Brickyard 400 driving for BK Racing. It was a long day for him in an event with a low attrition rate, as Danica Patrick and Trevor Bayne were the only two drivers in the 43-car field who failed to finish. | ||
| 5 | Kyle Larson | There is sure to be a lot made about Kyle Larson's return to Indy only a month and a half after his failed effort to run the Indy-Charlotte Double on Memorial Day Weekend. He can erase some of that bitterness with a Brickyard 400 win, an event in which he has a best finish of fifth in 2016. | ||
| 6 | Joey Logano | For all of his success in his career as a two-time Cup champion, the 2015 Daytona 500 marks Joey Logano's only win to date in one of NASCAR's crown jewel races. Logano's best Brickyard 400 finish is a runner-up in 2015 and 2019. | ||
| 7 | Christopher Bell | How much has NASCAR changed in just four short years? Christopher Bell has never raced a Cup car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Joe Gibbs Racing: His lone Brickayrd 400 start came in 2020 for Leavine Family Racing, when he finished 12th. | ||
| 8 | Chris Buescher | Chris Buescher has a single top-10 finish in the Brickyard 400, which came back in 2017 when he finished ninth driving for JTG Daugherty Racing. He'll now try and replicate some of the success he had on the speedway's road course, where he never finished worse than 12th and had an average finish of 11th in three starts. | ||
| 9 | William Byron | William Byron enters this week with a chance to become the fourth driver in history to win both the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 in the same season. That feat has previously been accomplished by Dale Jarrett (1996), Jimmie Johnson (2006) and Jamie McMurray (2010). | ||
| 10 | Brad Keselowski | In his long and successful career as a NASCAR car owner, Jack Roush has never managed to have one of his cars win the Brickyard 400. But then, Roger Penske had never been able to win the Brickyard 400 either -- until Brad Keselowski won it for him in 2018. | ||
| 11 | Bubba Wallace | Bubba Wallace is going to be a very solid dark horse pick for the Brickyard 400. One of the best races he ran early in his career was in that event in 2019, when he finished third. | ||
| 12 | Martin Truex Jr. | The Brickyard 400's three-year hiatus cost Martin Truex Jr. opportunities to get his first win in an event in which he now faces likely his last chance to win. His best Brickyard 400 finish came in 2015, when he ran fourth. | ||
| 13 | Ty Gibbs | I found it amusing when Steve Letarte compared the look of the engine fluid pouring out of the sides of Ty Gibbs' car at Pocono to chocolate milk. I guess that made Nesquik a very fitting sponsor for Jeff Green in 2000, when he won the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship in one of the most dominant seasons in that series' history. | ||
| 14 | Daniel Suarez | It's starting to look like Daniel Suarez's team has found a better baseline, which is a welcome development for them as the playoffs draw nearer. Suarez now has four finishes of 16th or better in his last six starts, three of which are top 15s. | ||
| 15 | Ross Chastain | The interesting thing about projecting Ross Chastain's Brickyard 400 is that there's almost no precedent for how he should perform at Indianapolis in a good car. Chastain's best Indy finish in any race came in the Xfinity Series in 2018, where he finished 12th while overperforming in Johnny Davis' small budget team. | ||
| 16 | Todd Gilliland | Indianapolis is the site of Todd Gilliland's best career finish in Cup, as he ran fourth on the road course in his rookie year of 2022. But he's never -- not once -- raced on the oval entering this weekend. | ||
| 17 | Justin Haley | Pocono marked the first pedestrian all-around run we've seen from Justin Haley and his team in some time. Haley finished outside the top 20 in 22nd, but without the sort of upside in performance we saw in other races like Sonoma and Loudon where Haley didn't get the finish he deserved. | ||
| 18 | Michael McDowell | After winning on the Indy Road Course last year, Michael McDowell joked that it was "lame" the track's Cup date was moving back to the oval for 2024. That development certainly doesn't help McDowell's must-win scenario to make the playoffs again this year -- a seventh in 2020 is his lone Brickyard 400 finish better than 17th. | ||
| 19 | Denny Hamlin | Denny Hamlin was leading the Brickyard 400 in 2020 and on his way to winning the only crown jewel of NASCAR he's missing when he blew a tire and crashed hard in Turn 1 in the final laps. Hamlin has waited four years for his chance at redemption, and does so coming off of a runner-up finish at Pocono. | ||
| 20 | Josh Berry | For the life of me, I cannot make sense of why the Wood Brothers did not do everything possible to keep Josh Berry and Rodney Childers together. Berry led eight laps at Pocono, the seventh race he's led this season with Childers as his head wrench. | ||
| 21 | Austin Cindric | There are few in NASCAR who appreciate the Indianapolis Motor Speedway quite like Austin Cindric does. But he's never finished a NASCAR race on Indy's oval; he crashed out of an Xfinity race in 2018 and then suffered an engine failure the next year. | ||
| 22 | Ricky Stenhouse Jr. | The Yard of Bricks has not been a kind place to Ricky Stenhouse, as he has three DNFs in eight career Brickyard 400 starts and only a single finish better than 24th. That was a 12th-place run in 2016, Stenhouse's best Brickyard 400 finish to date. | ||
| 23 | Chase Briscoe | Mitchell, Ind.'s Chase Briscoe is going to have a lot of support from Hoosier race fans in attendance for the Brickyard 400. He's trying to become the third Indiana driver to win the Brickyard 400, and he would join Tony Stewart (2005, 2007) and Ryan Newman (2013) in doing so. | ||
| 24 | Zane Smith | -- | A crash on a restart left him with nothing but a wrecked racecar to show for it, but the arrow is firmly pointing upward on Zane Smith's rookie season after his weekend at Pocono. Smith qualified a career-best ninth and backed that speed up early in the race, running top 10 and making a nifty three-wide pass for position on two Hendrick cars. | |
| 25 | Noah Gragson | An early crash at Pocono left Noah Gragson with his third DNF of the year 21 races into the 2024 season, but he can take solace in this: By the 21st and final race of his rookie season a year ago, Gragson had endured six DNFs and none of the upside he's shown at Stewart-Haas. | ||
| 26 | Carson Hocevar | Carson Hocevar should earn an attaboy for his evasive action at Pocono. Kyle Busch's spinning car was facing him driver's side, and Hocevar likely would have T-boned Busch in ugly fashion had he not spun his car in order to avoid a much worse collision than Busch ended up having with Ricky Stenhouse. | ||
| 27 | Daniel Hemric | Daniel Hemric crashed out of his lone Brickyard 400 start in 2019, but he's had some measured success on the oval in his NASCAR Xfinity Series career. Hemric finished eighth at Indy in 2017 and backed it up with a fifth the next year. | ||
| 28 | Erik Jones | Pocono marked one of Erik Jones' best efforts of the entire 2024 season, as he earned points in both stages on his way to a 14th-place finish. Jones now has two top-15 finishes in his last four starts headed to Indy, where he finished second in the Brickyard 400 in 2018. | ||
| 29 | Corey LaJoie | With the hire of Rodney Childers as his crew chief combined with the optics of him being the initiator of a multi-car wreck at Pocono, the pressure is going to be squarely on Corey LaJoie to prove himself next year. The good news is Childers has a track record of getting the best out of each driver he's with, as shown by the fact he won races with drivers like David Reutimann and Brian Vickers, who are analogous to what LaJoie is now. | ||
| 30 | Kyle Busch | Even before getting wrecked, Kyle Busch spent a good part of his day at Pocono getting outrun by Cody Ware. That's not a knock on Ware -- on his side of things, it's really cool -- but it is a sign of things that shouldn't be happening given both Busch's career and the caliber of team he's with. |
