Alex Bowman parked the No. 48 Chevrolet in its familiar spot in victory lane at Dover International Speedway, leading a 1-2-3-4 finish for Hendrick Motorsports on Sunday.
Bowman led Hendrick to only the fourth top-four sweep by a single team in NASCAR Cup Series history. Kyle Larson led a race-high 263 laps and finished second, Chase Elliott was third and William Byron fourth.
The milestones kept coming at the Monster Mile. Hendrick Motorsports won its 267th career NASCAR race, one shy of the team record held by Petty Enterprises.
Bowman — who added he’s “had my share of doubters” throughout his career — won his second race of the season and passed 1,000 laps led in his career. But the victory celebration at the Monster Mile had to seem familiar for Hendrick Motorsports. Jimmie Johnson, the seven-time NASCAR champion now in IndyCar, won a track-record 11 times at Dover in the 48.
Turns out, Johnson’s successor is just as adept at handling the rigors of the concrete mile track.
Bowman has followed two of NASCAR’s biggest superstars, first taking the wheel of the No. 88 after Dale Earnhardt Jr. retired and made the move to the 48 this season.
He’s tried to escape their large shadows by doing things his own way — though after early struggles in his career at Dover, he texted Johnson for tips that he followed to this day.
Bowman and crew chief Greg Ives put their spin into the game plan and flawless pit road execution help the 48 win this season for the first time since April at Richmond. Bowman joined Martin Truex Jr. as the only driver this season with multiple victories.
Joey Logano of Joe Gibbs Racing was the best of the rest in fifth.
A year after fans were not allowed to attend and Dover held two Cup races on the same weekend, a sellout crowd of 20,000 fans was announced at the Monster Mile and they were ready to bust loose.
Going mostly maskless — though Miles the Monster wore his — fans formed a deep line at the Chase Elliott souvenir hauler inside the fan zone. Dover also partnered with the Delaware Division of Public Health and about 100 fans received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine on Sunday and another 50 or so did the same a day earlier during the Xfinity race.
Aric Almirola’s woeful season continued at Dover when his No. 10 Ford slammed into the wall with less than 100 laps left in the race. Almirola crashed out for the second straight week and the Stewart-Haas Racing driver has only one top-10 finish in 2021.
Dover wrapped its only NASCAR weekend of the season. The track traditionally held two NASCAR weekends but moved one race date to Nashville Superspeedway. Nashville will have a Cup race on June 20. The 1.33-mile concrete track was built in 2001 by Dover Motorsports and hosted NASCAR and IndyCar events until 2011. Nashville Superspeedway held Xfinity and Truck events, as well as IndyCar races from 2001 until 2011. Dover hosted one race weekend in 1969 and 1970 and then held two races every season from 1971 to 2020.
NASCAR heads to Texas and the Circuit of the Americas for a road course race. COTA joined Indianapolis and Road America in rural Wisconsin as new road course events on a 2021 schedule that already included Sonoma Raceway, Watkins Glen and the Charlotte Roval.
