What caused Alex Bowman's disastrous 40-second pit stop at Darlington?

One of the messiest moments for a playoff driver at Darlington occurred in the first stage and involved Bowman

Entering the NASCAR Cup Playoffs as the bottom seed, Alex Bowman was desperate to make up some ground in the points standings. Instead, he struggled with the No. 48 car throughout Sunday's race, and even faced a major setback on pit road less than 70 laps into the event.

Bowman pitted under green, but instead of spending about ten seconds in his stall, it took his pit crew roughly 40 seconds to get the car fully serviced. He fell two laps down and spent a large chunk of the race just trying to make up those lost laps.

“It definitely looked pretty bad,” Vice President of Competition Chad Knaus told Motorsport.com's Matt Weaver after the race, where he discussed a dismal day overall for Hendrick Motorsports. “We’ll get it home and we’ll have a talk on that and understand what's going on. We just, some people like to do things a little bit differently than others.

“You know, we only get one spare pit gun per pit box. So how that sits and how it's arranged varies sometimes from team-to-team and we probably need to get our heads wrapped around that and get a collective decision and direction on all of that so we can move forward there as well.”

An unfortunate series of events

It appeared that the pit gun wasn't working when the rear tire changer arrived at the right-rear tire. The air hose somehow became detached, triggering panic and confusion in the No. 48 pit box as they tried to communicate what was happening.

The tire changer took a step back towards the pit wall, and then returned to the right side of the car as someone tried to explain to him that the issue was fixed. Meanwhile, a spare pit gun was brought forward and the tire carrier grabbed it before handing it to the rear tire changer, all while another individual was trying to tell him to just use the primary gun. He then spent time plugging in the spare gun while Bowman waited anxiously in his stall.

The issue was compounded by the fact that the air hose for the front tire changer got caught under the car. The jackman had to run back around and jack the right side up again so they could dislodge it, before finishing the stop with the left side of the car.

It was an ugly moment in a difficult night for Hendrick Motorsports, which had all four of their playoff drivers finish 17th or worse at Darlington. Bowman crossed the line in 31st, and is now 19 points below the cutline.