Alex Bowman did not win at Dover Motor Speedway on Sunday, but he built a cushion with a points-heavy performance that ended with a third-place finish.
Bowman, who started 16th after rain washed out qualifying, quickly worked his way inside of the top 10 at the 1-mile concrete oval. He raced his way to fifth by the end of stage 1, which secured six bonus points.
Bowman then put himself in position to finish second in stage 2 behind Christopher Bell. This locked up nine more points for the Hendrick Motorsports driver. These two stage finishes, along with a third-place finish in the race, secured 49 points. This was the second-most in the series, behind only race-winner Denny Hamlin (57).
Bowman scored his fifth top-five finish of the season and his third in the last six races.
.@Alex_Bowman ended the day at the @MonsterMile in 3rd! Solid day for the #Ally48 team. pic.twitter.com/qmGp97gWc7
— Ally Racing (@allyracing) July 20, 2025
Bowman went from only 32 points above the playoff cutline to 63 points above. He is only behind Tyler Reddick (+156) among drivers seeking their first win of the season.
"I feel like we were better than where we ended up, but with a poor day at Sonoma (Raceway), I had to start deep in the field (due to the qualifying metric)," Bowman said. "I couldn't get clean air, and then we got shuffled around a little bit on some of the short runs.
"But overall, we had a really good No. 48 Ally Chevrolet all day. Proud of everyone at Hendrick Motorsports. I've been a little bit sick and my cool shirt decided it wanted a Sunday off, so I'm really hot and really tired, but certainly, it was a really good day for our team."
Meanwhile, the driver immediately ahead of Bowman in the Cup Series standings missed out on points. Chris Buescher finished both stages outside of the top 10 before crossing the line ninth at the end of the race. He left Dover with only 28 points.
Buescher also built his cushion by moving to +44 above the cutline. He, like Bowman and Bubba Wallace (+16) received some assistance from a late incident that collected Ryan Preece, the first driver below the cutline.