Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
Post-race review and analysis from the NASCAR Cup Series race at Auto Club Speedway.
Who Won?
Alex Bowman. He dominated the final stage to score his second NASCAR Cup Series win.
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Alex Bowman’s big moment
Alex Bowman’s second breakthrough win couldn’t have come at a much better time.
Bowman entered this season known to be in a contract year, with the ever-present risk of losing his No. 88 Chevrolet to another upcoming star or funded driver.
It’s a position he knows all too well, having spent years toiling away in search of the right opportunity prior to landing at Hendrick Motorsports.
“Every year is a contract year,” he said on Sunday. “Every year of my life in the Cup Series has been a contract year. I’ve had contracts and two weeks before Daytona read a Tweet that said I’m not going to Daytona.
“There’s never a situation that I feel completely comfortable in. I feel like if somebody doesn’t want you driving their race cars, you’re not going to be there driving it.”
No one had said anything negative of Bowman or his future heading into 2020, but the Arizona native still had much to prove.
After making a quiet playoff exit in his first full year with the No. 88 team, Bowman secured his first win last summer at Chicagoland Speedway. He tried to ride the momentum of the win into the playoffs but struggled to advance past the first round before suffering a Round of 12 elimination.
Bowman had the excuse of Chevrolet’s overall struggles to fall back on at the time, but he was also outran by teammates Chase Elliott and William Byron in the playoffs.
That left Bowman flying under the radar entering 2020, in need of a breakout moment to reestablish himself as a contender.
He nearly pulled it off at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, rising to second before a late caution altered the outcome of the race.
But when Bowman first took to the track at Fontana, he knew this weekend was different. His No. 88 team had brought a near-perfect car. Everyone just needed to do their jobs – Bowman included.
“I don’t know what it was when we unloaded,” he said. “No car feels perfect here by any means, just with how the tire wear is, but every run in practice I would honestly ask (crew chief Greg Ives), I’d be like, it’s doing a couple different things, but like how are our lap times, and he’s like, you’re like two‑and‑a‑half tenths better than anybody else on those laps.
“Really knew we had a really good car, and it was just our job to keep up with the racetrack from there.”
Sunday’s race wasn’t easy. Ryan Blaney provided a stiff challenge over the course of the day, and Martin Truex Jr. rose into contention over the final stage. But Bowman ultimately lived up to expectation, leading 110 of 200 laps for a dominant victory.
Now he’s locked into the postseason early, with a chance to add wins and playoff points as his No. 88 team builds toward a hopeful championship run.
The tension of an uncertain future isn’t gone, but in the short term the pressure of a new tattoo based on a bet with Underoath drummer Aaron Gillespie will likely be the biggest stressor for Bowman’s life.
“We made a bet at Daytona,” Bowman said of his talk with Gillespie. “Pretty much everybody from Underoath was at Daytona. We made a bet that if I won, we were getting 88 tattoos, and then it just never stopped. We’ve been talking about it for the last two weeks.
“Apparently I have to get a neck tattoo, which I’m not really sure that that’s going to happen or not, but yeah, next time we’re all together, I guess we’re all going to get tattoos.”
Toyota shows improvement, still searching for pace
Toyota entered Sunday’s Auto Club 400 wary after struggling in both qualifying and the previous week’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The group emerged with host of strong results, but a bit of trepidation.
Kyle Busch secured the best Toyota finish since Denny Hamlin’s Daytona 500 win, coming home second behind dominant race winner Alex Bowman.
The Nevadan was content with the run in the aftermath of the result, but concerns over his No. 18 Toyota lingered after Busch finished 8.904 seconds behind Bowman at the checkered flag.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Busch said of the team. “Guys did a great job here though, just trying to work on it and trying to make everything we could all day long, all weekend long. (This) wasn’t a second-place car, but thankfully we got a good finish out of (it) and (got) some points.
“Guys are doing all they can, I know along with everybody at Toyota. I appreciate all the hard work. We just have to get a little bit better. We finished the end of last year so strong, I don’t know what we’re missing here. Obviously, it’s a little bit of something here and maybe a little bit of something in a few different areas, but overall good car today.”
Hamlin followed Busch in sixth – a welcome sign after a dreadful 17th-place performance in Las Vegas. But the Virginian was far from optimistic in the moments after the race.
“We’re still slow,” he said. “Our cars handled okay. If we don’t have a draft, we’re just run over. It’s tough because I feel like we’re getting beat on throttle time, but we’re also just getting murdered down the straightaways.
“Just need more horsepower, more downforce and less drag. If we can have all those, we’ll be better.”
Erik Jones snuck inside of the top-10 in the closing laps for a 10th-place finish, but also admitted that Joe Gibbs Racing’s Toyotas “have to get faster.”
Of the Toyota contingent, only Martin Truex Jr. showed strong pace.
The 2017 Cup champ steadily marched forward after starting at the back of the field for three pre-qualifying inspection failures. He spent much of the race’s early stages battling his Toyota teammates, setting off a profanity-filled tirade that elicited a humorous response from his spotter.
s/o to the person on the bleep button. pic.twitter.com/4ifVWysEFX
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) March 1, 2020
In the final stage Truex finally rose to prominence, challenging Bowman and Blaney for the lead and settling into the top-three. But for the second-consecutive week pit road proved to be his undoing.
Truex lost ground on his final pit stop when his rear-tire changer suffered a cramp and was slow to change his left-rear tire. The New Jersey native dropped deep in the pack and had to settle for 14th at the race’s end.
That left Toyota without a chance to chase down Bowman in the final run to the finish. The group will have to work to find more speed, or it’ll risk a similar result next weekend at Phoenix Raceway.
Ryan Blaney’s day ends in disappointment
Ryan Blaney’s No. 12 Ford has race-winning pace.
Now he just needs something to show for it.
For the third consecutive week, Blaney found himself in the top-two heading into the closing stages of a NASCAR Cup Series race. He had the only car capable of holding pace with Alex Bowman throughout the day, beating the Arizona native for a Stage 2 win and maintaining sight of his No. 88 Chevrolet during the final green-flag run.
By the time the final 10 laps came, Blaney knew a win was unlikely. Bowman had a near-insurmountable lead. But the Team Penske ace was positioned for his second top-two finish of the year.
But over the waning stages, something began to go wrong. Blaney reported a vibration, slowed and ultimately came to pit road with just three laps remaining – his right-rear tire corded and in tatters.
The unscheduled stop trapped Blaney a lap down in 19th as the checkered flag flew.
“We led a little bit and ran pretty good,” Blaney said. “We just corded a right rear at the end. We lost the lead there at the beginning of the third stage and kind of got swallowed up, and the 88 (Bowman) got away and got gone.
“We needed to be in front of him. It is just the way it goes sometimes.”
Blaney’s run continued an unfortunate trend – strong runs overshadowed at race’s end.
In the Daytona 500, Blaney was running behind Ryan Newman when contact between the pair set off the harrowing crash that led to Newman missing races for a head injury.
Blaney crossed the start-finish line just inches behind winner Denny Hamlin, but the result was overshadowed by concerns over Newman’s health.
In Las Vegas Blaney found himself leading in the closing stages, needing only to hold off a hard-charging Bowman for his first win of 2020. But an untimely yellow led Blaney to pit road for a stop that would prove to be ill-advised.
He finished 11th and could only watch as teammate Joey Logano celebrated a win he’d seemed poised to earn just minutes earlier.
Sunday saw Blaney in position to contend again – a positive sign given his car’s consistent speed. He left Fontana with the points lead in hand and a playoff point from a stage win, too.
The pace is there. Blaney just needs an opportunity to capitalize on one of his close calls before the rest of the field catches up.
Jimmie Johnson comes home seventh in his final Fontana start
NASCAR’s Superman made his final trip home as a full-time Cup competitor in Sunday’s Auto Club 400.
Jimmie Johnson made his final planned start at Fontana after a career filled with success on the two-mile oval. The Californian was honored with the chance to lead the field during a five-wide salute lap prior to the race and sped under wife Chandra and daughters Genevieve and Lydia on the flag stand when the green flag flew.
Those moments were each special, but Johnson also made the race memorable by contending throughout the day. He led 10 laps and spent much of the afternoon inside of the top-three to inspire hope of a victory in his Fontana swan song.
Those hopes faded during a drop to seventh on the final run to the finish, but Johnson left Fontana fifth in the standings with hope for future success.
“This team is going in the right direction,” Johnson said. “I know in my heart what I’m capable of and what this team is capable of. It’s just taken a little bit to get the right people in the right places and rebuild and get this Ally Chevy exactly where it needs to be.
“We just couldn’t adjust this car on the pits stops quite enough to get the ‘tight’ out of it. It was really competitive and racy at the start of a run, and then we would fade at the end. At the end, I thought I was going to blow a tire. I think I had cords on the fronts, and I thought I wasn’t going to finish the race. So to salvage a top-10 out of it and two ‘thirds’ in the stages… we are headed in the right direction.
“I want to thank the fans here in California. There have been some great vibes all weekend.”
Other Notes
- Kurt Busch looked strong early on but found himself trapped in the pack after rolling past his pit stall during an early round of caution-flag pit stops. Thankfully for the Nevadan, he and Chip Ganassi Racing were able to recover for a third-place finish. “I messed up on a pit cue,” Busch said. “But to have a third‑place run right here in (sponsor) Monster Energy’s back yard, this was a solid run for our Chevy.”
- Whether the group can sustain the performance remains to be seen, but a quiet 12th-place effort from Matt DiBenedetto kept himself and Wood Brothers Racing inside of the top-10 in the championship standings leaving Fontana.
- Brad Keselowski finally found success with new crew chief Jeremy Bullins in California, leading Team Penske with a fifth-place effort. “We were able to drive through the field there a couple times,” Keselowski said. “The car had a lot of long run speed. We never had the speed the 88 had through the whole weekend but we fought really hard and scored a lot of points today to dig us out of a hole we had from early on in the season. There were a lot of positives.”
- Aric Almirola stealthily rose to eighth on the final stint to score an eighth-place finish. The result was his first top-10 of 2020, and just his third in the past 21 races.
- Christopher Bell’s much-anticipated leap to Cup’s off to a miserable start. Bell finished 38th as the lone DNF with engine issues in Fontana, dropping him to 32nd in the championship standings. That places him behind drivers like the injured Ryan Newman, Premium Motorsports rookie Brennan Poole and Toyota teammate Daniel Suarez, who failed to qualify for the Daytona 500 and had Lap 1 issues at Las Vegas.
- Meanwhile, fellow rookie Tyler Reddick is inching toward the front. Reddick outran Richard Childress Racing teammate Austin Dillon and finished a strong 11th at race’s end in his first Cup start at Fontana. The run lifted him to 23rd in the standings, 15 points out of the top-16.
- Ross Chastain’s second run with Roush Fenway Racing was a quiet one. He finished just behind temporary teammate Chris Buescher in 17th, bringing the No. 6 Ford home without damage.
