NASCAR Cup Series star mortified by embarrassing playoff performances

Hendrick Motorsports star Alex Bowman has revealed he is mortified by how bad his performances have been in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.

Bowman pointed his way into the postseason, but heads into Saturday night's elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway facing an early exit.

The driver of the No. 48 Chevrolet currently sits 15th in the playoff standings and 35 points below the cutoff line, with only Josh Berry below him in the rankings.

Bowman's dire position comes after two disastrous playoff runs in recent weeks at Darlington and St Louis (Gateway), where he could only manage 31st and 26th, respectively.

Bowman on 'embarrassing' playoff performances

Bowman will need a significantly better result if he is to advance to the Round of 12 when the black and white checkered flag drops on Saturday night, and his team have made drastic changes to his pit crew in order to aid his effort.

However, Bowman is under no illusion that things have not been good enough so far, and that a massive improvement is needed this time out.

“Certainly frustrating, right?” Bowman said on his playoff run to date. “We had a really good summer, and the switch turned off for us, for sure.

"It’s kind of mortifying how bad we’ve been. It’s embarrassing. It’s not from a lack of effort, like everybody’s working so hard at HMS and our whole team is.

"We’ve just not put days together like we need to. So yeah, working hard to turn that around this weekend.”

Bowman's Bristol mindset

Interestingly, Bowman says that the tough spot he finds himself in almost takes the pressure off on Saturday night, so it will certainly be interesting to see how he performs.

“We’re in such a tough spot, it’s almost less stressful, right? It’s not like we’re really close to the cutline and you’re trying to make sure you don’t make any mistakes," Bowman added.

"We got to make something happen. Mentally going through these last couple weeks has not been a fun time for me, but mentally it’s always kind of not been a fun time for me the last couple years.

"Just trying to run the best we can this weekend and be as prepared as I can be to go out there and do my job.”

Playoff standings ahead of Bristol

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