{"id":24016,"date":"2019-03-08T17:20:41","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T23:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=24016"},"modified":"2019-03-10T10:28:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-10T15:28:26","slug":"arizona-natives-bowman-and-mcdowell-are-excited-to-be-back-in-phoenix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/08\/arizona-natives-bowman-and-mcdowell-are-excited-to-be-back-in-phoenix\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona natives Bowman and McDowell are excited to be back in Phoenix"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Alex Bowman<\/strong> is already anticipating the \u201cparty\u201d his grandmother will likely throw in advance of his arrival at Arizona\u2019s ISM Raceway for Sunday\u2019s TicketGuardian 500 (at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Alex Bowman and Michael McDowell. Photo courtesy of NASCAR and Getty Images.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Tucson native acknowledges with a smile that his first hometown Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> race of the season is a big deal for his family and friends, who still live in the region. It\u2019s been a good venue for him since joining the championship Hendrick Motorsports organization and there\u2019s nowhere he\u2019d rather score his first Cup victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically I go to dinner with them one night if I can and everybody will come on Sunday,” Bowman said. \u201cIt will be my two brothers, their two wives, my mom, my step-mom, my dad and my grandma. And then my grandma kind of invites everybody she knows and turns it into a party.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think her hairdresser goes with her even. You could honestly sell that place out on my grandma\u2019s friends.”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to understand the pride. Bowman, got a career resurrection of a lifetime when Hendrick Motorsports tabbed him to drive the No. 88 Chevrolet fulltime replacing the sport\u2019s Most Popular Driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., when he retired from fulltime competition in 2017.<\/p>\n

In his first Phoenix green flag driving the No. 88 while filling in for then-injured Earnhardt in 2016, Bowman earned his first ever Monster Energy Series pole position. Then he led a dominant 194 of the race\u2019s 324 laps to finish sixth \u2013 a career best mark for him up to that point and the most laps he\u2019d led in a single race still to this day.<\/p>\n

Each return to ISM Raceway\u2019s one-miler is something Bowman gladly anticipates.<\/p>\n

It was essentially the real launching point for his career in more ways than one. After that 10-race stint filling in for Earnhardt in 2016, NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner Rick Hendrick gave Bowman the job in the No. 88 fulltime. He answered with a career year in 2018 \u2013 scoring his first three top-five finishes and finishing with a career best 11 top-10s.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s qualified fifth or better at Phoenix in each of his three starts for Hendrick \u2013 adding a finish of 13th in this race last year. He crashed out last November at the newly-remodeled version of ISM Raceway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say there (ISM Raceway) and Charlotte are probably my two most confident places that I go as far as just feeling like I know what I need and can approach the race track and maybe have a little advantage on some guys,” Bowman said.<\/p>\n

Fellow Arizona native Michael McDowell, of Phoenix, is enjoying one of the best season starts in his previous 12 years of Cup competition. A fifth-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500 launched the season well. He\u2019s qualified well at both Atlanta (12th) and Las Vegas (16th) just not had the results to show with finishes of 37th and 30th, respectively. He is eager to right the ship in front of the hometown crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had great speed, qualified well at Atlanta and qualified well at Vegas and got a car in third round at both mile-and-a-halves which is really impressive for our organization,” said McDowell, who drives the No. 34 Ford Mustang for Front Row Motorsports. \u201cI think it\u2019s a combination of a really good offseason, expanding to three cars which allowed us to hire some great personnel and also just building momentum from last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cObviously this rule package has worked to our favor for now. The hardest part is the best teams are going to develop the fastest so we\u2019ve just got to be able to keep up over this next stretch of 10 weeks as those guys are figuring things out, we\u2019ve got to stay right on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as the new track layout last Fall – the start-finish line was moved to the former Turn 2 area as part of a massive upgrade to the facility on-track and off-track \u2013 Bowman, at least, doesn\u2019t find it a particular game-changer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it really just changed restarts,” Bowman said. \u201cIt changed pit road as well, but it changed restarts quite a bit. So you have to approach that a little differently. Driving the race track is still the same obviously, but just how you approach your restarts has definitely changed up quite a bit.”<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question Bowman would love to earn his first career Cup victory in front of his hometown fans and family \u2013 especially his grandma. But beyond that, Bowman is eager to right the season\u2019s ship, so to speak. He has two 11th-place finishes (at Daytona and last week at Las Vegas) and a 15th-place effort at Atlanta is ranked 12th in the championship standings.<\/p>\n

And this will be the first time the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series has used a new technical package on a track 1-mile or shorter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to change short track racing nearly as much as it is going to change everywhere else we go,” Bowman said. \u201cI think it will look more like what you saw in 2014-2015 when we had a lot of downforce at the short tracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to it. Obviously, the reconfiguration made restarts pretty crazy and I love that race track. It will be fun. It\u2019s going to be a little faster than it was last year just with more downforce, but that is really all I feel like is going to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s hopeful the hometown venue will present the season\u2019s first top-10 opportunity if not a chance to celebrate in Victory Lane with his family. But Bowman insists that urge to win is present every place he goes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI go every week to win,” Bowman said. \u201cI mean every single week I go to the race track, I go to win. I don\u2019t go to try and run top-10 or try to run top-five or try to have a good points day or whatever. I just want to win.”<\/p>\n

Media Center Interview:<\/h3>\n

Michael McDowell – <\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/MENCS_ISM_McDowell_030819.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Alex Bowman is already anticipating the \u201cparty\u201d his grandmother will likely throw in advance of his arrival at Arizona\u2019s ISM Raceway for Sunday\u2019s TicketGuardian 500 (at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The Tucson native acknowledges with a smile that his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":24018,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[491,561,711,16],"class_list":["post-24016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-alex-bowman","tag-ism-raceway","tag-michael-mcdowell","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_1096.jpg?fit=640%2C640&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-6fm","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24016"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24020,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24016\/revisions\/24020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}