CONCORD, N.C.—Alex Bowman is confident he’ll “be just fine” once the green flag falls in the Coca-Cola 600.
For the second time in the past eight months, a race-related injury sidelined the 30-year-old racer from participating in NASCAR Cup competition.
Following a concussion sustained at Texas Motor Speedway last fall to breaking his back in a nasty sprint car shunt during a High Limit race at 34 Speedway in West Burlington, Iowa, Bowman must once again live up to his status as the Comeback Kid.
“I broke my back a month ago, so there’s definitely things that are going to come along with that for a long time,” Bowman said. “Shoot, from everybody I’ve talked to, probably forever. There’s some discomfort here and there, and things that I do that don’t feel good. But that’s just part of it and stuff I’m going to have to deal with. It’s not too bad.
“For the most part, I’m back to normal. Kind of easing back to getting back into the gym and training hard. I didn’t want to kill myself training all week this week trying to be ready for the 600, and then show up tomorrow super sore and worn out already. Just trying to be smart with things.”
No, Bowman is far from perfect. He felt “OK” after a 200-lap test session at North Wilkesboro Speedway on Tuesday to ascertain whether he could withstand the pain of being in the car. The No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports even took Bowman through a mock pit stop anticipating the abrupt pressure on his spine when the team drops the jack after servicing the car. That was one of the driver’s greatest fears.
“That’s the biggest thing and that’s really the whole reason in testing,” Bowman said. “The doctor was like, ‘It’s healing and you can do it based on pain tolerance, but you can’t simulate what it’s going to be like without getting in a racecar.’ And even that, you can’t simulate Charlotte at North Wilkesboro, so I don’t have a clue. It’s going to hurt. I don’t know how much it’s going to hurt. Hopefully it doesn’t hurt very much because at North Wilkesboro it didn’t.
“But twist the wrong way, sometimes it hurts or do different things and it hurts a little bit. In the race car, at the end of a six hour race, I’m probably not going to feel the best.”
With the resources at HMS, Bowman believes he’ll be able to pick up where he left off. Before he was injured in Iowa, Bowman was ninth in the driver points after the first 10 races of 2023. However, his status wasn’t reflective of his performance. Bowman posted three top fives and six top 10s throughout Talladega Superspeedway. He led the points for three races prior to NASCAR penalizing the team for a rules infraction following Richmond on April 2.
“For us, we just have to do what we were doing,” said Bowman, who dropped to 17th in the standings during his three-race absence. “We had the best average finish (10.3) out of anybody at the time I got hurt. We had a massive points penalty, missed three points races and we’re still on the cutoff line. So if we can just go back to how we were running, I know we can do it.
“Obviously we want to go win races and I think that comes with how we were performing. But, yeah, just have to go kick some butt.”
