“He Is Smarter Than That”: Daniel Suarez Having None of Alex Bowman’s “Part of Racing” Explanations After Darlington Incident

With 49 to go at Darlington, Alex Bowman decided to make a series of pretty aggressive blocks on Daniel Suarez, which unfortunately ended up sabotaging both of their races. But while one driver was convinced what happened was part of racing, the other believed what happened was ‘dumb’.

Speaking of that word, both drivers blamed each other over what happened in their own ways, first in post-race interviews, and then later on X. But without a doubt, it was Suarez who was pretty mad at Bowman after the race.

Alex Bowman and Daniel Suarez share their take on their incident at Darlington

After the race, Suarez said that blocking once is okay considering it’s a “give and take.” The Trackhouse driver also claimed that he could easily have pulled the #48 into the wall, but he didn’t do it because he isn’t “like that.” 

“But when I went to his outside, he blocked me again. I wasn’t gonna leave the second time … I won’t give him a break twice. It’s not right. He has to be smarter. He is smarter than that. He has 5 minutes of being a dummy and he used it against the #99,” Suarez described.

When asked if he would want to have a word with Bowman in person, Suarez replied, “Right now, I’m a little bit too heated. I hope I don’t see him in the next 15-20 minutes.”

On the other hand, speaking about his blocks in a post-race interview, Alex Bowman admitted that while his blocking didn’t work, Suarez, by choosing not to lift, led to both of their wrecks.

Bowman added to his protest against Suarez as he said, “Every time I race the #99, he does something dumb whether it’s his crew chief flipping me off at the airport or just anytime I’m around and he blocks me really aggressively.”

The #48 driver claimed that looking back on it, he is aware that he shouldn’t have done what he did. Yet, he wasn’t having any of Suarez calling him dumb. “He wants to call me dumb? Every time I’m around him there’s a big block, that’s just part of racing sometimes,” he said.

Bowman admits his fault on social media, Suarez wasn’t pleased with his comments

Of course, there wasn’t a confrontation between Suarez and Bowman, at least not with cameras. But Suarez was pretty upset with Bowman despite the Hendrick driver more or less admitting his fault.

Bowman posted on X, “Bad block. My fault. Got blocked all night and decided enough was enough. Unfortunately I didn’t realize the 99 got outside and that got us crashed.”

However, the Mexican driver was clearly not over the whole thing, especially considering Bowman used the word ‘dumb’ in his post-race interview. “I’d use other words but that wouldn’t be appropriate so let’s stick to “dumb move”. I’m not surprised by now,” Suarez wrote.

But one thing that was common in both of their posts was that they were both hoping to bounce back in Kansas.