With his head spinning and stomach churning inside his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, Alex Bowman had a flash of serious doubt about his racing future.
Illness forced Bowman to abandon his NASCAR Cup Series ride after 70 of 95 laps March 1 at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, where Myatt Snider finished the race in relief.
“Yeah, obviously COTA wasn’t a lot of fun for me,” said Bowman, who was medically cleared this week to race in Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.
“Everything was fine until it wasn’t, obviously, in the car; dizziness, throwing up on myself, spinning, kind of all of the things. It wasn’t fun, and I was not pumped that I had to get out. Obviously, I’ve raced through a lot of injuries, but this was one where I was going to end up running into something or somebody, and the smart thing to do in that case was to get out.”
At that moment, the thought occurred to Bowman that he might not ever get back in.
“I mean, honestly, yeah, when I got out at COTA, I was like, ‘This is probably it.’ That was what was going through my head. So, yeah, that sucked, and I’m thankful that I got another shot at it.”
After the COTA race, Bowman was diagnosed with vertigo, and he missed the next four Cup Series events during his recovery. His return comes at a track billed as the “World’s Fastest Half Mile,” where G-forces over the course of 500 laps can exact a cumulative physical toll.
So why did Bowman choose this particular race for his comeback?
“Because they said I could,” he said with a laugh. “I’m a race car driver, so you tell me I’m clear and I’m going to go do it. Yeah, it’s probably the worst place possible to come back to, I think, not just from it’s physical, but it’s a track that is extremely difficult. The margins from the front to the back of the field are tiny.
“You look at qualifying here, and every hundredth is multiple spots, for the most part. I haven’t qualified a car in a month. I’m trying to get back up to speed. My expectations coming here, it’s one of my best tracks; two of the last three poles here, expect to contend for wins. I think expectations probably change a little bit this week. If we could get out of here with a top 10, top 15, I think, on my side of things, I’d be happy.”
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