“Greatest Driver of Our Generation”: Alex Bowman Decodes Kyle Larson’s Magic in NASCAR and Beyond

Alex Bowman and Kyle Larson have been shouldering each other on the Cup Series grid for three seasons now. This time has been plenty to prove to Bowman that his Hendrick Motorsports teammate is the best driver of this generation. Admiring the 2021 Champion’s ability to switch between the many disciplines of racing without any loss in performance, he was all praise for him in a recent interview.

He said, “I don’t mean this in a disrespectful manner at all because I think he is the greatest race car driver of our generation hands down easily. But the winged sprint car thing isn’t the impressive one to me… It’s getting in a dirt-late model that you have never driven before and instantly being successful. It’s getting in the things that he hasn’t done before in being successful…

Bowman later mentioned, “I think doing the things that he hasn’t done before, that’s the really impressive to me. And yeah, he gets in everything and makes it look easy.”

Larson spends almost every weekend living up to his Cup Series commitment. But away from the demands of the NASCAR job, he travels all around the country to race in anything with an engine. Dirt midgets, sprint cars, late models, and outlaw karts have all been on his list of successes thus far.

Bowman too has voiced his love for dirt racing on plenty of occasions. He owns a team called Alex Bowman Racing, that runs in the High Limit Sprint Car Series founded by Larson. It was during a race in the same that Bowman suffered a fractured vertebra and hurt his Cup Series season.

Alex Bowman cites prior experience as key behind Kyle Larson’s sprint car success

Of all the out-of-NASCAR projects that Larson has taken up, it is with winged sprint cars that he has been most comfortable. Bowman believes that this is because his teammates had plenty of experience racing in them when he was young. He said, “Kyle’s at the top of the list on that. It’s incredible to watch. I think a lot of that comes from when he grew up racing winged sprint cars.”

Using an example, Bowman added, “If there was a World of Outlaws Pavement Midget Series like what I grew up racing, I feel like I could get in and instantly be successful and beat those guys because it’s what I grew up doing.” Hence, Bowman’s justification concluded that it was the racing experience during their formative years that helped someone like the 2021 Cup Series champion to ebb and flow between different disciplines.

Despite the enthusiasm and confidence, he has decided to focus on his Hendrick Motorsports career and he will be focusing only on the Cup Series come next season. Bowman will have to wait at least another year before he can join Larson in a racing series outside NASCAR.