Alex Bowman was eliminated from the Quaker State 400 following a one-car incident in Stage 2 of the race at Kentucky Speedway.
Bowman hit the wall on Lap 110 after losing his right-front tire.
He will finish the race last in 39th.
“My Hendrick carbon seat held up well, everything is good,” Bowman said. “Unfortunately we blew a tire. Kind of looked like it might have broken a brake rotor before that, but it’s hard to say because you break the brake rotor when you hit the wall anyway, so part of it. We will move on and evaluate what happened. Pretty early to blow a tire.”
Bowman had taken four tires on his first pit stop on Lap 63 and two tires at the end of Stage 1.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver had entered the race 15th in the point standings but 16th in the playoffs standings. Sixteen drivers will make the playoffs.
He left Kentucky just nine points ahead of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for the final spot.
It is Bowman’s first DNF of the season. He was coming off three consecutive top 10s.
“Absolutely we are right in the thick of the points stuff, so we can’t afford this, this will hurt us quite a bit,” Bowman said. “Really unfortunate, but it’s not something that we could prevent. It’s nothing that we caused and there is not much you can do about it. You pop a right front and have a long time to stare at the wall and then you hit it and then you’ve got to move on.”
Tonight: pic.twitter.com/tXJGyPOnLB
— Alex Bowman (@Alex_Bowman) July 15, 2018
Unfortunately, our race is over. The No. 88 crew is taking a look in the garage and it looks like we lost a right front brake rotor.
— No. 5 Team (@Hendrick5Team) July 15, 2018