“Still adjusting to how much it hurts to crash”: Alex Bowman drops his verdict on the current generation NASCAR cars

Alex Bowman shared his thoughts on his adjustments after the Gen-7 cars were introduced. Bowman acknowledged his on-track struggles, including crashing and said that they were a learning experience to improve in the coming years.

Driving the No. 48 Chevrolet Camaro for Hendrick Motorsports, Bowman is a 31-year-old professional stock car racing driver from Tucson, Arizona. Ever since NASCAR introduced the Gen-7 cars, the driver only has two wins, the least among his teammates.

Speaking about the adjustments in the Next-Gen car, the Arizona native said:

"Yeah, still adjusting to how much it hurts to crash."

The eight-time Cup race winner shared that the team has made changes since the introduction of the next-gen cars in a bid to improve on-track performance. He added:

"I think it's definitely been a learning experience and a learning curve and continues to change, right? We've had a couple different iterations of rules packages. We'll see where that goes in the future. Like we've tweaked things to try to get the racing better at a lot of different styles of race tracks, so, it's just way different than anything we ever had before, but it's pretty normal at this point."

Alex Bowman's last win was the Chicago street race last year - Source: Imagn

In 2021, Alex Bowman had four wins in the sixth-gen car. However, the year NASCAR brought the next-gen car, Bowman only scored one win, though he missed five races in the latter part of the playoffs due to concussion-like symptoms.

He missed three more races in 2023 after suffering a severe back injury, contributing to a winless season.

Bowman snapped an 80-race winless streak in the streets of Chicago last year. It was his only victory in the season, along with eight top-5 and 17 top-10 finishes.

The next Hendrick Motorsports driver with the least wins in the next-gen era is Chase Elliott who amassed six victories. Meanwhile, Kyle Larson and William Byron outshined their teammates with 13 and 11 victories, respectively.

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Alex Bowman opened up about back-to-back injuries amid NASCAR's Gen-7 era

When Alex Bowman missed eight races from 2022 to 2023 due to injuries, the driver was challenged not to question himself. He admitted that his situation "wasn't much fun" considering he performed badly on track the team was good at.

Bowman said (via Racer):

“I don’t know if I questioned myself, but I think definitely after two back-to-back bigger injuries, it’s easy to get in that spot. It wasn’t much fun, we were so good before I broke my back and came back and we were good for like two weeks and then terrible the rest of the season. It was crazy how bad we were at places that I’m typically really good at.”

While the start of his 2024 campaign wasn't ideal, Bowman said the team turned it around, especially after winning the Grant Park 165 (Chicago street race).

“This year, we didn’t start the year (well) but we turned it around pretty quickly. I think we’ve done a lot of the right things and I think being on the other side of it definitely feels good," Bowman added.

In Picture: Alex Bowman drives the No. 48 Chevrolet - Source: Imagn

Unfortunately, Bowman's playoff run last year ended due to failing to meet post-race inspection requirements at Charlotte. He was disqualified from playoff contention, which allowed Joey Logano to return to the postseason and later win the championship.