Alex Bowman to Miss Cup Race at Vegas due to Vertigo

Alex Bowman will remain sidelined for a second consecutive week as the Hendrick Motorsports driver continues to battle vertigo. Bowman will be replaced by JR Motorsports driver Justin Allgaier for this weekend’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Allgaier, a JR Motorsports driver in the O’Reilly Series (formerly Xfinity) who has 84 career Cup starts and does frequent at-track data-gathering testing for Chevrolet, won the O’Reilly race last March at Vegas. “Alex continues to work closely with doctors toward being medically cleared, but he’s still experiencing some lingering symptoms,” Hendrick Motorsports president Jeff Andrews said in a news release. “He’s put a lot into the recovery process, and we will continue to support him every step of the way. Our priority remains making sure Alex is fully ready before returning to the race car.” Even if he returns next week at Darlington, Bowman will be a longshot to make the playoffs.  Already last in the regular-season standings among the 36 full-time drivers before last week, Bowman is now 77 points behind the current playoff cutoff and likely will be more than 100 points behind after Las Vegas. The 32-year-old Bowman has missed races in three separate seasons for medical reasons. He missed five races in 2022 because of a concussion and three races in 2023 because of a broken back. He was replaced last week at Phoenix by Viking Motorsports O’Reilly Series driver Anthony Alfredo, who also serves as the HMS simulator driver. Alfredo had worked his way into the top-10 before being involved in an accident. He was not injured.