Alex Bowman just can’t win a race without hurting someone’s feelings. Following his latest win, his seventh-career NASCAR Cup Series win which came Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Bowman was the subject of a expletive-filled radio tirade from Kyle Busch.
Busch had Sunday’s race won, when a caution with three laps to go allowed Bowman the chance to take two tires on pit road. Bowman then passed Kyle Larson on the restart and held everyone off for the win.
After crossing the line, Busch keyed his radio and said, “The same fucking guy who backs into every fucking win that he ever fucking gets backs into another fucking win. Bullshit!”
Following the comments going public, Bowman continued a tradition of making a t-shirt making fun of a competitor’s comments after his win. Bowman released an Alex Bowman, “All Luck, No Skill” T-shirt with the phrase “Backing Into Wins” on the back collar of the shirt.
Family sport friendly… 18% of the proceeds backing into an animal shelter near you https://t.co/YTNdSOowYQ
— Alex Bowman (@Alex_Bowman) March 7, 2022
In honor of Busch, Bowman decided to donate 18% of the proceeds of the shirt sales to a local animal shelter.
On Wednesday, Bowman stopped by Sirius XM NASCAR Radio to talk about his win, the shirt and his conversation with Kyle Busch following the race weekend.
Bowman said that he just feels like his is how his NASCAR career has gone. He wins, and wins often, but people just don’t seem to think he’s a good race car driver.
“The way my career has kind of went, I feel like I’m not that guy that’s going to get looked at as this amazing racecar driver and I’m not sometimes going to get credit that I feel like I might deserve,” Bowman explained. “But it is kind of what it is.”
The Arizona-native says that Busch actually called him on Monday night to clear the air about his radio communications that were heard and distributed on social media in the moments after Bowman scored the win at Las Vegas. Bowman says Busch apologized and explained that he meant no disrespect on the comments, he just got caught up in the frustrations of losing the race.
“I talked to Kyle Monday night, he was just mad to have lost the race,” Bowman recalled. “He wasn’t mad at me, I didn’t do anything to him. Kyle and I have always raced each other with respect. He was just mad that he lost the race and I was the one on the other end of the rant. Obviously, Kyle is passionate, we’ve seen that for a really long time. I was in the fire on that one, but he basically said he was just mad about losing the race and didn’t mean to be so disrespectful to me.”
While Bowman received a kind follow up call from Busch on his reaction to Bowman’s latest win, the same could not be said for Bowman’s previous win at Martinsville last fall, where he spun Denny Hamlin from the lead late to win the race.
Bowman says that while Hamlin crossed the line in his post-race antics, he understood Hamlin being upset.
“As far as Denny goes, I crashed him. Like, I got loose, screwed up and crashed him. I understand him being mad about that,” Bowman explained. “I think Denny got super personal and crossed all of the lines, but at the same time, I understand why he was mad. It is what it is, it’s part of it.”
Hamlin called Bowman a Hack after that run-in at Martinsville, which led Bowman to making a “Hack” T-Shirt to mark that occasion.
For Bowman, it’s all about taking a negative and turning it into something good.
“Being able to turn those things into a positive, obviously, the Hack shirts were able to buy all of my team guys Martinsville clocks and then donate the rest to best friends. And with the shirt this time, we’re donating 18% to a local shelter. Cool to be able to raise some money for homeless pets,” Bowman stated. “It’s been fun to see all of the fan interaction with the t-shirts, because we are definitely selling a lot of them.”
ICYMI: @Alex_Bowman addresses the criticism he received after his #Pennzoil400 win at @LVMotorSpeedway and tells @DanielleTrotta & @LarryMac28 #SXMOnTrack that he and Kyle Busch have spoken since Sunday #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/gzLA6DdjO6
— SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Ch. 90) (@SiriusXMNASCAR) March 9, 2022
Will Bowman get a chance to print some new merch this weekend at Phoenix Raceway?
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