NASCAR driver Alex Bowman will step away from dirt sprint car racing following injuries
Hendrick Motorsports has been bitten as their drivers suffered injuries outside of NASCAR competition, multiple times.
If you go back several decades, Dale Earnhardt Jr was involved in a fire while racing a Corvette. From that point forward, racing outside of NASCAR was highly discouraged for HMS drivers.
Then came Kyle Larson. In 2021, Larson drove to the NASCAR Cup Series championship. He smoked them, by a lot. And at the same time, Larson was dominating in dirt late models, dirt midgets and dirt sprint car races.
Larson credited his season partially to how things were going on the dirt racing side. Winning on the dirt only further increased confidence for Sunday’s race.
And, NASCAR is in an era where practice time is limited. Racing in a sprint car throughout the week, adds reps in preparation for the upcoming NASCAR race.
Rick Hendrick himself became open to the idea of his drivers racing in more than just NASCAR Cup Series events. All at once, Hendrick drivers Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman and William Byron all began racing in various short track events.
In February 2023, Bowman signed a three-year extension with Hendrick Motorsports. And just months later, he was sidelined.
Unfortunately, Alex Bowman suffered an injury as he went upside down in a dirt sprint car. That caused him to miss 3 races in the early portion of the 2023 season.
Alex Bowman fractures vertebra in sprint car crash (Video)
Alex Bowman explains why he won’t be racing a sprint car
“I’ve missed 10 Cup races in the last two years for injuries,” Alex Bowman stated via Sirius XM NASCAR Radio.
“For Ally, Hendrick Motorsports and everybody that puts so much into the No. 48 program, I can’t afford to miss more races. I need to be in the car every week.”
“You look at what it did to us this year. We went from being extremely strong every week, up front in points to a really tough rest of the year. I don’t need to do that again.”
“So, I won’t be in a winged sprint car for the foreseeable future. I would say when I’m done Cup racing, I would love to do the Outlaw tour. It’s just going to be something that I’m going to push off until I’m at that point in my life where it’s what I want to do and it’s not going to take away from anything else.”
“My job on Sundays is super important to me. Unfortunately, this year I was doing something for fun that greatly took away from what I do on Sundays. I’m going to avoid that going forward.”
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Did that decision come from Hendrick Motorsports?
“It was mine, at first,” Bowman added.
“I made the decision. Then, my decision got reinforced by management. To be honest, I had already made that decision on my own.”
“I love sprint car and midget racing. But, I love the mechanical side of sprint car and midget racing just as much as I love the challenge of trying to figure out how to drive a winged sprint car.”
Alex Bowman has been known to weld up his own chassis from scratch for his dirt racing team.
“I love building cars and being on the crew chief side of things. I’ll still be around it, I think ABR (Alex Bowman Racing) will probably scale back a bit this year. We’re not going to run the 40 race schedule that we ran last year. Even after I got hurt those guys kept going up and down the road with a couple different guys behind the wheel.”
“This year we’re going to scale back. I’ll probably go race with my friends here and there.”
“I’ll get back to it someday but the decision, it was definitely mine but reinforced by smarter people than me.”
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Links
Alex Bowman | Hendrick Motorsports | High Limit Sprint Car Series | NASCAR
