Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman recover from incidents for solid COTA finishes

AUSTIN, Texas- Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman put in monster drives en route to each posting an impressive recovery Sunday at Circuit of the Americas.

Elliott wheeled his No. 9 NAPA Chevrolet from 22nd to fourth in the final 13 laps after digging out of a hole just seconds into the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix.

In turn one on the very first lap, Ross Chastain turned Elliott. Elliott took to the radio to voice his displeasure with Chastain, vowing to turn his No. 1 car when given the chance, as he had to pit for a broken toe link.

“ I got run over, I felt like, there in the first corner. I’m curious to see it. I still haven’t seen it to know whether or not I did something wrong. I’m happy to own it, if I did. I just felt like it was the first corner of the first lap, and it’s just a bummer to get behind and then we had damage,” Elliott said post-race.

Not everything was lost as Elliott stayed out and racked up six stage points for finishing fifth in stage one. He didn’t get any points in stage two and ran 22nd on lap 82 of 95. By that point, crew chief Alan Gustafson had pulled off a good strategy call to get Elliott fresh tires. It allowed him to salvage a poor day into tying Tyler Reddick for the fifth-most points of any driver (39). 

“Alan and the guys did a great job fixing it and getting it that close. We got behind on a restart there and just had to play major catchup there. Alan made a great call there at the end to put tires on it. We were rolling up through there really good at the end. Obviously when you have a good car like that, I would have liked to have been in the fight with those guys. But it was a great recovery from where we were at during the end of the second stage,” Elliott said.

As for Bowman, he ran inside of the top-10 but spun and lost track position, then recovered to 10th and lost track position again due to back-to-back track limit penalties.

Entering the final laps, Bowman was almost an afterthought. However, by staying out under the final caution in a field of 34 lead-lap cars, and with the midfield mixing it up on the restart, Bowman wheeled his No. 48 Ally Chevrolet home to a ninth-place finish in a fantastic effort.

The two Hendrick Motorsports drivers are among the NASCAR Cup Series’ top road course drivers. Elliott has seven road course wins while Bowman has one of the strongest average finishes on the left and right turns.

In the standings, Elliott currently sits fifth and Bowman sits seventh. 

The NASCAR Cup Series now heads to Phoenix Raceway for the Shriners Children’s 500. The green flag set to fly at 3:30 p.m. ET next Sunday, March 9, on FS1.