FONTANA, Cali., — It’s safe to say that Hendrick Motorsports and the Chevrolet camps are officially back. After finishing a miserable 21st last season, Alex Bowman and his No. 88 unloaded a certified rocketship en route to a dominating performance in the Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway.

The 26-year-old was the class of the field the entire weekend in Fontana. Setting the standard right off the truck, Bowman paced both practice sessions and topped his competitors in best lap averages. The only thing the Hendrick Motorsports driver didn’t do was start from the pole and even then he took the green flag from the third-position. The message remained clear – the No. 88 was the car everyone would be chasing on Sunday.

Bowman backed up his speed from practice, leading a race-high 110 laps and capturing a stage to secure his second career victory in the NASCAR Cup Series. He had nothing but praise for Crew Chief, Greg Ives, and his entire team after an impressive day at the track.

“This is a place we’ve struggled at for the last two years, so for him (Ives) to be able to unload that close, really the last two weeks in a row, makes my job much easier,” Bowman told POPULAR SPEED. “ We can really fine tune the car throughout practice instead of having to make huge changes. It’s really been our probably best couple practices the last two years that I’ve been driving for HMS, and I just attribute that to the hard work in the shop and great work over the off-season.”

While the sixth-year driver made things look simple, it was far from the reality. Bowman revealed that restarts proved to be difficult throughout the day. Ryan Blaney was his biggest challenger during the 200 lap event and he said the reason he took control of the second stage was due to tire conservation. Whenever the driver of the No. 88 would try to chase him down, he’d eat up the tires in attempting to do so.

“The track was pretty cool, so the grip level was up,” Bowman said. “ So for five or six laps, pretty much everybody could run wide open. When everybody can run wide open, you can all go about the same speed, which means it’s more about drafting and lane choice and building those runs, which turns into running four and five wide.”

It’s been no secret that 2020 would be a contract year for Bowman. With the star-studded surplus of free agents on the market following the season, it could be argued that this was the most important win of his career to date.

“Every year is a contract year,” Bowman admitted. “Every year of my life in the Cup Series has been a contract year. There’s never a situation that I feel completely comfortable in. I’m as motivated as ever, doing everything I can to try to be the best on and off the racetrack as I can be. Hendrick Motorsports is where I want to be. It’s where I want to stay for the rest of my career.”

Undoubtedly a bold statement from the young driver, but a win this early in the season should look good for his contract bid. Not to mention, this is the third week in a row where Hendrick Motorsports and the Chevys showed immense speed and performed incredibly well throughout the entire race.

“We need to take that positive momentum of the hard work Chevy put in and we needed to put that to results on the racetrack, whether it was top-10s or top-fives,” Ives said. “It’s great to have the win, but continuously building that momentum is something that is needed in the shop environment. It’s needed when the guys turn on the TV and they see the racing we had today, and their product was on the racetrack competing for laps, competing on pit road. It’s a totally different vibe, totally different feeling.”

Off to an excellent start, the No. 88 team and all of Hendrick Motorsports seem to have the chance to win multiple races in 2020. But for Bowman, the “good judge” in success resides next Sunday at his home track, Phoenix Raceway.

The Arizona-native finished 35th and 23rd in the two races run at the one-mile tri-oval, results that would not be acceptable this time around.

“We were absolutely horrendous, so hopefully we can go there and run a ton better,” Bowman said. “ It’s just hard to say this early in the year, but I think the new car is quite a bit better. I just want to win races. That’s all there is to it.”

Bowman has run five races at his home track, but only saw success in 2016 when he won the pole and finished sixth in the Fall while subbing for Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was sidelined with a concussion. In the last three events at Phoenix Raceway, the driver of the No. 88 has not placed better than 23rd – but with a new and improved Camaro, it could be a different story in the desert next weekend.