Alex Bowman on race-losing Miami error: I choked that one away
The Miami race boiled down to a straight fight between Hendrick Motorsports duo Alex Bowman and Kyle Larson.
Alex Bowman has taken full responsibility for the error that cost him victory in the NASCAR Cup Series race in Miami.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver grabbed the lead of Sunday’s Cup Series race at Homestead-Miami with a brilliant pass over the 23XI Racing Toyota of Bubba Wallace with 33 laps to go.
However, just seven laps from the finish, Bowman moved too far high up the track and slid against the outside wall at Turn 3 and 4, allowing his fast-charging teammate Kyle Larson to snatch the lead.
The #48 Chevrolet avoided significant damage and the 31-year-old was able to take the chequered flag in second place, scoring his first podium finish in the Cup Series since he won at Chicago in July last year.
Although Bowman is unsure if he had the speed to keep Larson at bay in the closing stages, he still described the race as a missed opportunity for the #48 crew.
“I guess I choked that one away. Just burned my stuff up,” he said. “Saw the #5 [Larson] coming, so moved around a little bit.
“Not when he passed me, but the time before that I hit it hard with the right front and ended up just bending something enough that I lost a lot of right-front feel and then I pulled it off the wall too far right there and ended up hitting the fence pretty bad.
“So yeah, that’s on me. Just needed to do a better job there. I don’t know that we were gonna hold him off regardless, as much faster as he was than us, but certainly made it easier on him than I wanted to.
“So I hate that for this Ally 48 group. They deserve better than that. Just a couple of mistakes there. I felt like we were okay all day. That last run was the best we were.”
Bowman had a poor track record at Miami coming into 2025, having never previously led the race since his Cup Series debut in 2014.
Hence, taking pole position and leading 43 laps marked a major improvement in the Arizona native’s form at the 1.5-mile speedway.
Bowman explained that he gained a better understanding of the oval during a Goodyear tyre test in 2024.
“Honestly, I don’t think we were nearly as good as we were at the test, especially at running the wall,” he said. “I just couldn’t run the wall well all weekend really, which was what I could do really well at the test.
“So we’ve got to go back and do our homework and figure out why that was. But yeah, it felt like our short-run speed was obviously really good with being able to drive up there and get the lead. [I] pressured Bubba into a mistake and then let myself get pressured into a mistake.
“Annoying, but Kyle’s the greatest race car driver of our generation. If that’s the one guy that beat us this week, it’s certainly not the end of the world, but we need to go get some trophies for sure.”
