Alex Bowman will not race in Las Vegas due to vertigo

Alex Bowman will not compete this Sunday, March 15th, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and has now missed two consecutive races in the Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet No. 48. The discomfort that forced him to exit the car on lap 71 of the DuraMAX Texas Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas was later diagnosed as vertigo, and the symptoms remain unresolved.

Justin Allgaier will drive the Ally Chevrolet in the fourth round of the 2026 NASCAR season. Allgaier, 39, won the 2024 NASCAR O'Reilly Series championship with JR Motorsports and also secured a victory at Las Vegas in March of last year with that same team, an affiliate of Hendrick Motorsports.

Photo By Genesis

"Alex continues to work closely with doctors to receive medical clearance, but he is still experiencing some lingering symptoms," said Jeff Andrews, president and general manager of Hendrick Motorsports. "Our priority remains for Alex to be fully ready before returning to the race car."

The heat in Austin as a trigger

The race at COTA on March 1st physically punished a good portion of the field. With ambient temperatures near 27°C, the interior of the cars can exceed 50°C because the cockpit retains heat from the engine and asphalt, and ventilation is practically non-existent. Bowman began to feel unwell and exited the car, but he wasn't the only one affected. A.J. Allmendinger finished the race without a cooling system in his suit and was attended to by medical personnel in the pits. Kyle Larson and Ryan Preece also reported failures in theirs during the race. The difference is that the others recovered; Bowman did not.

What is vertigo and why it is incompatible with competing

Vertigo is a disorder of the vestibular system, the inner ear mechanism that controls balance, which generates an intense sensation that the surroundings are spinning, accompanied by nausea, loss of balance, and difficulty focusing vision. In motorsports, where one operates at high speed, this condition can cause sudden disorientation and total loss of visual references.

The most frequent causes range from the displacement of calcium crystals within the inner ear (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo) to inflammation of the vestibular nerve.

36th place with 23 points

Bowman occupies 36th place in the championship with just 23 units, 77 points behind the Playoffs cut-off where Brad Keselowski holds the 16th position with 100 points. He finished 40th in the Daytona 500 and retired at COTA, so the two races he did compete in also left him with nothing salvageable.

With eight wins and more than 150 top-ten finishes in 12 full Cup Series seasons, Bowman has the resume to overcome a situation like this, but he needs to be in the car to do so. His last victory came at the Grant Park 165, where he broke a streak of 80 races without a win.

Anthony Alfredo already substituted for him at Phoenix and now Allgaier will take the wheel in Las Vegas. If medical clearance continues not to arrive, Hendrick Motorsports will have to keep rotating replacement drivers in a car that should be accumulating points toward the Playoffs.