Austin Dillon notched a season-changing win at Richmond Raceway this past weekend. Alex Bowman came up just short of one himself, as he finished second to the Richard Childress Racing wheelman in Virginia.
The No. 48 Chevrolet wheelman wasn’t happy with how it all went down though. Bowman took a shot at Dillon’s teammate Jesse Love during the race, accusing him of trying to slow him down in the final laps: “His teammate is f****** blocking me now,” radioed Bowman, via Motorsport.com. “It’s just race manipulation, but whatever.”
Bowman’s frustration made sense, but race manipulation? That might just be a bit of a heat of the moment comment from the Hendrick Motorsport star. NASCAR insiders Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic reacted to the idea on the latest episode of The Teardown.
“(Bowman) was saying that Jesse Love, who’s driving an RCR car, passed him on newer tires and then sort of parked it, I guess,” Gluck stated. “I went back and listened to that whole last sequence, from when he passes Bowman, and the only thing they tell him is, he’s kind of racing [Erik] Jones and a couple other guys in a little bit of a gob of cars, and they tell him with five laps to go, basically don’t wreck. Please don’t cause a caution. Back it way down.
“So, maybe Bowman felt like, ‘Oh, this guy passed me and stopped in front of me,’ but I think they were also telling Jesse Love like, ‘Hey man, please don’t spin out and cost Dillon the win.’”
Bianchi agreed with Gluck, thinking Love didn’t intentionally slow Bowman down. RCR simply didn’t want Dillon’s teammate to do anything that could jeopardize his win at Richmond, similar to the way last season’s race played out.
“Exactly. Let’s not have a repeat of last year,” Bianchi added. “I was in the RCR pit, Austin Dillon’s pit for the final laps, and when you walked down there, a lot of nervous faces. You know, usually at that time in that point of the race, they’re intense, but this was different. This was nervous energy for a team that was like, ‘We know what can happen.’ They were just looking at the laps.
“As soon as Austin Dillon took the white flag, I kid you not, it was like this weight was off their shoulders. ‘We’re okay now, we can breathe.’ It was at that moment they realized they’d won the race, even though there was still one lap to go.”
All told, Austin Dillon is locked into the playoffs, while Alex Bowman is hanging on by a thread. He’ll have one more shot to secure his position this weekend at Daytona, but it’s far from a given. No wonder why he’s frustrated.
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