Alex Bowman’s win at last year’s Grant Park 165 was cathartic.
Behind the wheel of the No. 48 Chevrolet, Bowman won his first road course in the Cup Series portion of the Chicago Street Race after returning to NASCAR racing following a concussion in 2022 and a broken back in 2023. The victory secured his spot in the initial field of 16 drivers in the 2024 playoffs.
“Getting back to victory lane was special for me,” Bowman told the Sun-Times. “But honestly, just the atmosphere of the whole event has been my favorite part of it. The fan engagement, walking to the track and seeing everybody, the concert on Saturday and everything that goes into that — it’s just a cool atmosphere.”
The experience still resonates with Bowman as he returns to Chicago this weekend attempting to repeat his success amid a 34-race winless drought that includes seven finishes of 27th or lower over nine weeks this spring. Before last season’s win, he was winless in 80 races.
As was the case each of the last two years, rain is in the forecast for this weekend’s Cup Series and Xfinity Series races. Bowman, who has experience driving in less-than-ideal conditions, expects navigating the narrow course — 12 turns and 2.2 miles through downtown streets — to again be precarious, even without the weather complicating matters, but he revels in the challenge.
“You have concrete barriers all around, so you make one little mistake, and you’re in a lot of trouble,” he said. “You add some rain to that, and it only gets harder. If it rained at a normal road course, you would run outside of where the rubber is on the track because the water on top of the rubber gets really slippery. In Chicago, there’s no room to do that.
“It’s been a tricky couple of years, and the surface is super rough, so it’s tough to get a hold of. It’s pretty slick, and cars move around a lot, but you don’t have room to push things. But I think that the difference makes it fun.”
Bowman said the fan participation for the first two Chicago Street Races was surprising for a city that’s hardly known as a NASCAR hub. He recalled chatting with fans near the track in 2023 as he dealt with a mechanical failure that required him to pull out of the race.
“Everybody that I run into has been pumped,” he said. “It’s a new crowd with a lot of people that haven’t been to a NASCAR race before, so getting that experience for them has been cool. Hopefully, it makes them want to go to other races, too.”
Bowman has been pleased with efforts to reach new audiences — including in June in Mexico City, where NASCAR held its first Cup Series race outside of the United States since 1958. He said NASCAR also solicited feedback from drivers about the first two Chicago Street Races in order to improve it.
“It’s been cool to break the mold of going to the same track every year, and that tracks have been flexible and work with us to make all of it work,” he said. “It’s created a lot of new excitement for us.”