The weekly series of NASCAR driver interviews begins with 21-year-old racer Alex Bowman. The Tucson, Arizona native drives the No. 7 Nikko Radio Control Chevrolet for Tommy Baldwin Racing.
Q: Do you have any racing superstitions?
A: The color green on a race car has always been bad luck to me and we had a sponsor last year that had green on the car and both times we ended up destroying the race car.
So, the color green has always been bad luck to me.
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Q: As you were climbing the ranks, was there a ‘go-to’ person that was always there to help?
A: In all honesty, I ran so many different types of race cars there was never one driver that I could go to. Joe Custer, of Stewart-Haas Racing, he was always there with advice on the sport and directions to go. At the same time, my dad was always doing his best to help me any way he could, always being supportive.
Q: What is your favorite track and why?
A: That would be Salem, in Indiana. It’s just got a lot of character. It’s really rough, wears out tires really fast, you run right up against the fence in one corner and in the other corner you run the middle to the bottom. It’s ridiculously fast. It’s a lot of fun to run.
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Q: What do you do in your downtime when you are not racing?
A: I work on my street cars a lot. I built a few cars on air suspension and right now I’m working on a 911 Turbo that makes a bunch of horsepower, but when I’m not doing that I’m typically hanging out at the shop with the guys.
Q: What is your favorite racing memory?
A: In 2011, we restarted an ARCA race 12th with three or four laps to go and won. That was a good one, for sure.
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Q: What is the best prank you have pulled on someone or had pulled on you?
A: Oh man. Well in 2011 I was running the K&N Pro Series East, Coleman Pressley was my teammate and they made a, trying to say this without being extremely inappropriate, they made a long, straight object. I guess you can say it looked like a snake, made out of bondo, it was huge. They put it in the cool box while we were rolling through tech at Greenville-Pickens, and we had to pull that out of the car because one of the NASCAR officials saw it and wanted to see what it was. It was hilarious.
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Q: Who were your idols growing up?
A: When it came to NASCAR stuff I was a Jeff Gordon fan. I watched more Sprint Car and Midget stuff, so I was a big Josh Wise, Michael Lewis, Dave Steele fan from that.
Q: Who is the toughest driver to pass?
A: I would probably say Mike Wallace. It doesn’t matter if you’re putting him 100 laps down or racing him for the lead, that guy will battle you like it’s the last lap fighting for the win.
Q: What track would you like to see added that is not on the Sprint Cup schedule?
A: I would say Salem. Just because I want to see half the Sprint Cup drivers that have their luxury motor homes and their airplanes have to go to a place like that, where the only bathrooms are port-a-johns and the race track is coming apart underneath you. I think a lot of them would be out of their element and I think it would be a fun show.
Q: If you were in charge of NASCAR for a day, what would you change?
A: Part of me wants to say do something to cut the cost, give the smaller teams a better chance, mostly because I’m always driving for a smaller team. In all honesty though, I would increase the horsepower, open up the motor rules, but take the downforce away. If you look at the racing in the 80’s, they made 500 lbs of downforce, 600 horsepower. It was easy to pass, you could race guys. Now we have 750 horsepower and a couple thousand pounds of downforce and you can’t pass, you can’t get by somebody without getting them ridiculously loose.
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