Alex Bowman loves racing and being a NASCAR Cup driver. He’s been with some of the smallest and lowest-funded teams including BK Racing and Tommy Baldwin Racing, and for the last eight seasons, he’s also been with the biggest and best-funded organization in the sport, Hendrick Motorsports. But wait, there’s more.
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Bowman was Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s hand-picked choice to replace him behind the wheel of the No. 88 following the 2017 season, a year Bowman sat out without a ride. Bowman had replaced Earnhardt in several races in 2016 after Junior suffered a serious concussion, missing the entire latter half of the season.
Although there have been instances where Bowman wondered if he’d be retained by team owner Rick Hendrick, including at the end of the 2023 season when he missed the playoffs and finished a disappointing 20th in the standings, he’s always had his contract renewed.
When asked by Jeff Gluck of The Athletic on what continues to drive him, Bowman didn’t hesitate with a forthright answer. “Probably just continuously trying to be better,” he said. “Racing Cup at this level, it’s really easy to lose sight of the fact that you’re living the dream. You’re doing what you always wanted to do growing up.
“But it’s so hard and so competitive, and there’s so much pressure all the time that it becomes work. And then you think winning solves everything, or winning will make everything better. And it really doesn’t, because you still have to go the next week. You can still get your a** kicked just as bad the next week.”
Consistency remains a problem for Bowman
Speaking of that, Bowman has had a problem with consistency throughout his career, even when he hit the jackpot joining Team Hendrick. The winner of eight Cup races to date, he can win one week and finish in the bottom fourth of the field the next.
For example, thus far in the first 20 races of 2025, although winless, Bowman finished second at Homestead, only to finish 27th the following week at Martinsville, 35th at Darlington and 37th at Bristol. Or how he finished fifth at Kansas, then wound up 29th at Charlotte, 36th at Nashville and 36th again at Michigan.
“So it’s just the grind of continuing to try to train harder, find new things, and be faster,” Bowman said. “The Cup Series is in a place right now that 10 years ago, nobody was even close to this level. It’s continued to elevate.
“All the tools we all have access to now, everybody’s gotten so much better and everybody pushes each other. The field is so close. All the cars are the same.”
