When Alex Bowman first found out about his disqualification on Sunday night after the playoff elimination race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, he immediately tossed his waterproof iPhone into his pool and triggered an unfortunate set of circumstances.
“My phone proceeded to call 911 and tell them that I was in a car crash,” Bowman said during his media availability on Saturday at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “Sunday night was not very good if I’m being honest with you.”
Oh, and his window cracked in his personal car, significant enough to make it really cold driving around during a generally frigid week and his home roof sprung a leak.
“It’s been a week, man.”
Not only did the disqualification strip him of his results on Sunday, it was also enough to cost him a spot in the third round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, offsetting one of the more spirited playoff runs of the autumn.
Bowman entered the playoffs as something of a longshot but then scored the most points in the first round.
“It couldn’t happen to anyone else that way, right,” Bowman said. “Part of life and just moving on and focused on going fast this weekend.”
What emotions did he feel after finding out that his car failed post-race minimum weight inspection.
“All of them,” he said. “For sure.
“Honestly, it’s part of the deal. We win and lose as a team. We’ve worked really hard and did a lot of things right and we got something wrong and there’s no way around that. All we can do is continue to run pretty well and continue to do what we’ve been doing and this is a good place for us to try to win, and I think we have a good shot at that.”
How did his phone, in the pool, call 9-1-1?
“So, it hit the bottom of the pool and I walked away, and 20 minutes later, I was like ‘I need to go get my phone,’ because iPhones are waterproof. When I say throw, I kind of just tossed it, because I knew my phone was about to blow up and I didn’t want to see any of it, right?
“Luckily, the phone doesn’t have service at the bottom of a pool so nothing came of it. Apparently, the phone records that you were in a car crash if it hits something hard enough so that happened. It’s a true story. I guess you could write that I did it out of rage but I just didn’t want to see anything about it.”
Bowman said he couldn’t feel the weight difference.
“There’s no way,” Bowman said. “Beyond that, the car was super bent after it launched over the curb and it sucked after that, honestly. It wasn’t enough that I could have felt that as a driver. It wasn’t a good day for us in general. We didn’t run the way we expected to run. I damaged the car pretty badly. Bummer that I did that. I don’t know what happened from there, but nothing I ever felt.”
Was Bowman surprised the team ultimately chose not to appeal?
“Yes and no,” Bowman said. “I think I understand where everyone was at on that. We just overstepped the margin. It’s pretty black and white at that point. It’s part of life.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.