DOVER, Del. – For years, Alex Bowman watched Jimmie Johnson dominate NASCAR Cup Series races at Dover Int’l Speedway.
Sunday during the Drydene 400 at the one-mile, high-banked concrete oval, Bowman took the car Johnson made famous by winning 11 times at the Monster Mile and put it back in victory lane there for the first time in four years.
With a lightning-quick pit stop during the stretch run to the finish, Bowman wrested control of the race away from teammate Kyle Larson and then pulled away to win by 2.017 seconds.
Bowman took the lead with 97 laps left, beating Larson off pit road after the fifth caution of the race, which waved on lap 302 after Aric Almirola slammed the outside wall in turn four with his Ford Mustang.
From there, despite two more restarts prior to the finish, Bowman never relinquished the top spot again. He led the rest of the way uncontested for his fourth Cup Series win and second of the year.
It marked a turnaround for Bowman, who had struggled in recent weeks following his first win of the year at Richmond (Va.) Raceway before rounding back into form this weekend at the Monster Mile.
“We won Richmond (Raceway) and then had a really rough couple of weeks there. We went to some really good race tracks for us and struggled. I told the guys last week, ‘We’re still the same team that did it at Richmond,’ and we proved it today,” said Bowman in victory lane. “This is another really good place for us. I’m so pumped for Ally. It feels right to put the (No.) 48 back in victory lane here after how many races that this car has won here.
“Mr. H (Rick Hendrick) is here. I don’t think I’ve won with him here before, so that’s really cool.”
Bowman credited his pit crew with winning him Sunday’s race, as clean air proved to be advantageous all race long. The pit stop where Bowman came off pit road first was his fastest of the season to date.
“I’m so proud of this pit crew. It was obviously a rough off season for us and we had a big void to fill. It’s not that we’re ever going to fill the void that Rowdy (Harrell) left, but Allen (Stallings) is doing a really good job and the whole pit crew is doing a really good job,” Bowman noted. “Thanks to my spotter, Kevin Hamlin, for couching me there at the end.
“It was fun racing Kyle (Larson) and glad to get Hendrick Motorsports another win. If we hadn’t beat him off pit road when we did, I don’t think we’d have won that race.”
Before Bowman turned the tables in the final corner, Larson utterly dominated Sunday’s race and appeared poised to capture his second win of the Cup Series season.
Larson swept both stages and led four times for a race-high 263 of 400 laps, the third-most laps the Elk Grove, Calif., native had ever paced in a single race at NASCAR’s top level.
But the 28-year-old tipped that, when it mattered most, he didn’t have the track position he needed and there “wasn’t much that could be done” to catch Bowman in the final laps.
“I feel like all four of us Hendrick guys were pretty equal, so it was a case where whichever one of us got out to the lead was going to be pretty hard to beat,” lamented Larson, who has never won when he’s led more than 200 laps in a Cup Series race. “(Bowman’s) team just did a really good job on that pit stop, gained control of the race, and I never really had a shot after that. … I feel like I did everything I could.”
“I think, straight up, the (No.) 5 (Larson) was better than us, but I feel like clean air was so important today,” Bowman agreed. “That was the difference at the end, and it was really cool to win a race for my crew like that.”
Chase Elliott came home third and William Byron finished fourth, giving Hendrick Motorsports a sweep of the top four finishing positions.
It marked the fourth time in Cup Series history, and the second time in the modern era, that one team took the top four positions in the final rundown. Prior to Sunday, the last organization to accomplish that feat was Roush Fenway Racing, which did so in 2005 at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway.
Utilizing fresher tires than most of the frontrunners had late in the race, Team Penske’s Joey Logano was “best of the rest” with a fifth place finish, followed by Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick.
Logano pitted during the penultimate caution period with 87 laps left, when Anthony Alfredo got loose and spun off turn two after near contact from the Chevrolet of Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Denny Hamlin, Tyler Reddick, Daniel Suarez and Cole Custer closed out the top 10.
Driving for 23XI Racing, the team co-owned by NBA legend Michael Jordan, Bubba Wallace scored a season-best 11th place finish and ran inside the top 10 for a portion of the final green-flag run.
The NASCAR Cup Series season continues May 23 with the inaugural race at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, the EchoPark Texas Grand Prix.