By Jerry Jordan, Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The last time Alex Bowman rolled in for Daytona 500 Speedweeks he ended up in a tit-for-tat with team owner Rick Hendrick over who had the fastest Corvette and the two were supposed to race for pinks.
A year later, the race still hasn’t happened and Bowman told Kickin’ the Tires he is ready to take Hendrick’s ride away from him. But he stopped short of saying the NASCAR Hall of Famer was scared to get on the track even though he pointed out that the bossman continues to come up with excuses, like it’s too cold outside to race.
“It was like 70-something degrees the day before we left. He needs it warmer, uhh, I guess his car doesn’t like it when it’s cold or something,” Bowman said. “I don’t know but eventually it has to happen.”
He added that he and Hendrick are both heavily invested in making their cars faster and he has solid knowledge that the boss man has hired a crew to “purposefully make his car faster than mine.”
“See, if I called him scared right now, it’s going to end really badly for me,” Bowman said. “I’m going to show up and he’s going to have a six-second drag car or seven-second drag car. So, No. I do not think Mr. Hendrick is scared of drag racing my street car. But I think he’s just making sure he embarrasses me – he doesn’t just (want to) beat me by a little bit. He’s got to beat me by a lot, so I know there is a bunch of work going on with both cars. It will be interesting, for sure.”
Bowman said he wants the race to go off sooner than later, preferably in the next couple of months and despite knowing Hendrick can outspend him on buying speed, he said he isn’t worried.
“I’ve got a couple of tricks up my sleeve, too,” Bowman said. “It, kind of, has to happen at some point.”
Hendrick said last year that, “One of us is going to lose a Corvette.” Hendrick also pointed out that Bowman was responsible for getting himself into a grudge match scenario because he was the one who began trash-talking about how fast his car was.
“I said, ‘okay, then why don’t we make it interesting. You know, that show on TV, one guy loses his car, and we’ll do it that way,'” Hendrick said, at the time.