By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service

Alex Bowman picks a tough track for his return from illness

BRISTOL, Tenn.—With his head spinning and stomach churning inside his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, Alex Bowman had a flash of serious doubt about his racing future.

Alex Bowman. (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)

Illness forced Bowman to abandon his NASCAR Cup Series ride after 70 of 95 laps March 1 at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, where Myatt Snider finished the race in relief.

“Yeah, obviously COTA wasn’t a lot of fun for me,” said Bowman, who was medically cleared this week to race in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

“Everything was fine until it wasn’t, obviously, in the car; dizziness, throwing up on myself, spinning, kind of all of the things. It wasn’t fun, and I was not pumped that I had to get out. Obviously, I’ve raced through a lot of injuries, but this was one where I was going to end up running into something or somebody, and the smart thing to do in that case was to get out.”

At that moment, the thought occurred to Bowman that he might not ever get back in.

“I mean, honestly, yeah, when I got out at COTA, I was like, ‘This is probably it.’ That was what was going through my head. So, yeah, that sucked, and I’m thankful that I got another shot at it.”

After the COTA race, Bowman was diagnosed with vertigo, and he missed the next four Cup Series events during his recovery. His return comes at a track billed as the “World’s Fastest Half Mile,” where G-forces over the course of 500 laps can exact a cumulative physical toll.

So why did Bowman choose this particular race for his comeback?

“Because they said I could,” he said with a laugh. “I’m a race car driver, so you tell me I’m clear and I’m going to go do it. Yeah, it’s probably the worst place possible to come back to, I think, not just from it’s physical, but it’s a track that is extremely difficult. The margins from the front to the back of the field are tiny.

“You look at qualifying here, and every hundredth is multiple spots, for the most part. I haven’t qualified a car in a month. I’m trying to get back up to speed. My expectations coming here, it’s one of my best tracks; two of the last three poles here, expect to contend for wins. I think expectations probably change a little bit this week. If we could get out of here with a top 10, top 15, I think, on my side of things, I’d be happy.”

Christopher Bell’s NASCAR Cup effort is missing something—but not much

Fresh from victory in Friday night’s NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Christopher Bell turned serious—and honest—when asked about the current state of his NASCAR Cup Series program at Joe Gibbs Racing.

“We are missing something,” acknowledged the driver of the No. 20 Cup Series Toyota.

It’s not that Bell is having a brutal season. He’s seventh in the Cup standings, with three top fives and four top10’s in seven races. Bell’s 225 laps led are second most in the series behind teammate Denny Hamlin’s 440.

Nevertheless, Bell conveyed disappointment at his failure to win a race so far this season.

“We have the same group, same people, same process and same equipment that we did when we won three races in a row last year,” Bell said. “We have all the resources. We’re just kind of swimming up creek a little bit.”

Bell pointed to the March event at Phoenix Raceway as a pivotal point in the early season. Bell led a race-high 176 laps, but Ryan Blaney took advantage of a late caution to win the race.

“I think, had that yellow flag not come out at Phoenix, and I won the race, we’d be sitting here talking about how great of a season I’ve had,” he said. “But the yellow flag did come out at Phoenix, and I didn’t win the race, and now we’re talking about a mediocre season.

“It just isn’t clicking right now on the Cup side. It feels like it’s really close to clicking, but we’re still striving to be where we need to be and want to be.”

Will early win be launching pad for Chase Elliott?

By his own description, Chase Elliott’s 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season has been one of ups and downs.

The high point came March 29 at Martinsville Speedway, where Elliott held off Denny Hamlin for the victory. Never before in his Cup career had Elliott won as early as the seventh race of a season.

It’s not Elliott’s nature, however, to get overly excited by success or overly disappointed by the lack thereof. The driver of the No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet sees the early victory as an opportunity to build a meaningful season.

“Fortunately, the last one was an ‘up,’” Elliott said of the Martinsville win. “But I think it’s also important to recognize that, man, there’s an awful lot of racing left. Yeah, I think for us, it’s not like, ‘OK, we’ve got the win and pressure’s off.’ That’s not how I’ve looked at it.

“I’ve looked at it with, honestly, just some excitement from the standpoint of, man, we have a longer runway to build on a win, you know? I think for us, we’ve gotten to the last 10 or 15 weeks of the year before and really had to perform just at an extreme level and kind of catch up, in some regards. Like, even last year, we got ourselves to the playoffs and we didn’t have the wins, the playoff points and all the things banked up.”

“I know the system’s different (return to 10-race Chase format this year), and I get all that, but the concept is very much the same. We still need to perform well throughout the first 26 weeks, and I think when you are able to bank a win early, you kind of have a little bit of a longer runway to continue to put good runs together, stack more points and get going on the right foot.”