Alex Bowman disqualified after Charlotte Roval, loses final NASCAR playoff

The Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 Chevrolet was found to be too light during post-race technical inspection after the race on Sunday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval and driver Alex Bowman has been disqualified.

As a result, Bowman the driver falls out of the driver playoffs and the No. 48 car is out of the owner’s playoff. Joey Logano now advances to the driver’s playoff, joining his No. 22 car that was already in, while the 23XI Racing No. 45 car now advances to the next round of the owner’s playoff, joining driver Tyler Reddick, who had already advanced on Sunday.

NASCAR chooses not to offer exact details about the weight, because the decision could be subject to appeal, but Cup Series managing director did takes questions from the media and explained that the weight was under the .5 percent tolerance, while explaining the process.

Moran said they run the top-five and all the playoff cars through the inspection stations, including the optical scanning station that details measurements and weights, and the latter is where the No. 48 failed.

NASCAR gave the 48 team the chance to refuel the car and then add water but it was still under the .5 percent tolerance of the starting weight, which is calculated by the driver’s weight.

“So we give them every opportunity to make minimum weight,” Moran said. “We run them back through, and unfortunately, they were light again. They are allowed a (.5 percent) weight break, which is for usage of fluids and so on. That’s about 17 pounds.

“We backed the car back off the scales, run it back and then unfortunately it was the same weight. So the car had a weight issue. All the other cars cleared inspection, 48 was too light and that ended up in a disqualification.”

Hendrick Motorsports has not yet decided if it will appeal.

This might have been the moment Bowman lost the weight, but an appeal might result in even stiffer penalties as NASCAR has a strict enforcement on unsecured ballast.

“I didn’t crash but that was the hardest I’ve ever hit anything in my life,” Bowman said after the race. “It’s just a car thing, right? These things have big rub blocks underneath them and when they come down, you hit that and it’s really solid. How I was following the 1 and someone else, I couldn’t see and was too far to the left and kind of just launced over that. My mistake. Caused that for sure. Glad we didn’t tear anything up and on to the next one.”

He also said ‘I hit hard enough to tear a lot of stuff up’ and as it turned out, he might have.

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• NASCAR Xfinity playoff transfers decided by controversy and dramatics at Charlotte Roval