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Noah Gragson’s Nashville Incident With Alex Bowman Perfectly Captures the No. 4 Driver’s Season So Far

Originally posted on The SportsRush
By Gowtham Ramalingam | Last updated Jun 2, 2025 9:04 AM ET

Noah Gragson is currently going through his maiden season with Front Row Motorsports in the NASCAR Cup Series. His latest race at the Nashville Superspeedway ended in disappointment and summed up his year so far. He was hit with a DNF after getting caught in a wreck induced by Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman.

It was rather unfortunate that he made no mistake in the incident that occurred at Turn 3 on Lap 114. Bowman slid his No. 48 Chevrolet Camaro into Gragson’s No. 4 Ford Mustang and forced them both into the wall, causing heavy damage. The crash happened right in front of Bowman’s teammate, Kyle Larson.

Gragson later told the press, “I gave (Alex Bowman) a whole two lanes off the bottom and he just trekked me. It annihilated us. It was so early in the race, and that was a hard hit. It is just sort of the story of our year so far. We’ve been running good, running better, then we get taken out by things not of our doing.”

Alex Bowman gets loose and takes Noah Gragson with him into the wall.@AlwaysRaceDay pic.twitter.com/eVeTU3QLSW

— Mr Matthew CFB (@MrMatthew_CFB) June 2, 2025

The 26-year-old identifies the solution as racing faster and moving away from such mishaps. He continued to laud his team for the work they have done thus far on his car and mentioned the performance at Charlotte in particular. They’d brought in a tenth-place finish, their third top-10 this season.

Will Gragson race in the In-Season Tournament?

The field for the In-Season Tournament has been set following the completion of the race at Nashville. The drivers who sit at the top 32 spots of the points table will compete across five races for a prize money of $1 million. Sitting in 31st place, Gragson is eligible to enter the competition as well. He will be seeded into a bracket over the next three races.

The tournament will then begin on June 28 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. The driver who finishes higher than the other in each head-to-head matchup will advance to the next round until there are only two left for the finale at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The five races will go down at Atlanta, Chicago, Sonoma, Dover, and Indianapolis.

Given his performance this year, Gragson will likely not be the one to walk away with a million dollars. However, getting close to the golden mark could boost his optimism tremendously and help him perform better over the course of the longer season.

This article first appeared on The SportsRush and was syndicated with permission.

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