NASCAR's Chicago winner Alex Bowman raises a toast to 'haters' who said he ‘didn’t deserve to be in Hendrick Motorsports’

After he won the race at Chicago, Alex Bowman had a witty message for those who doubted him. The Hendrick Motorsports won his first race since Las Vegas in March 2022. Bowman snapped a winless streak that extended to 80 races and booked his place in the playoffs.

During a media session after his win, Bowman spoke about the bottle of bourbon he had with him and the ones that he's had for a bit too long. And while recalling this instance, the #48 driver fired a message to his haters.

"I got to my hotel room, there's a little box with my name on it that had a bottle of bourbon in it. That's in my bag. I'm pretty excited about that. But I’ve got a couple bottles that were bought early in the ’22 that were like the next win we’re going to drink these, and they’ve been sitting on the counter way too f*****g long,"

"Everybody that said I couldn’t win and don’t deserve to be at Hendrick Motorsports and all that bulls***, cheers to you," Bowman said.

Bowman also made a hilarious remark about his celebration plans after the Chicago win. As per Sportsnaut, the 31-year-old driver recalled his victory celebrations in Las Vegas from two years ago and the regret he had carried from that day for two years:

"Gosh, the last Cup race I won, I remember we were in Vegas and we had won a lot pretty recently to that and we all landed at like 4:00, and every other race we had celebrated and had so much fun with the team and we were all kind of like, 'Nah, it’s too late, we don’t need to celebrate, we’ll celebrate the next one or whatever,’ and I have regretted that ever since, obviously, so that is not going to happen tonight," Bowman said.

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Alex Bowman on Hendrick Motorsports' confidence in him through the rough patch and the noise

During a post-race press conference, Alex Bowman was asked whether, by winning at Chicago, he felt like he had secured his future with HMS. Bowman responded by mentioning how HMS have believed in him over the difficult phase of his career in the last two years.

"Certainly I have a contract through the end of 2026 and that hasn't been questioned as much as Twitter would like to believe it has. At the same time, it's more about, for me, overcoming everything that has happened in my life for the last two years. It's been really difficult," Bowman said. [2:20]

He pointed to his concussion injury towards the end of 2022 which forced him to miss five races, then him breaking his back in 2023 because of which he missed another three, and then his struggle all through last year. Bowman claimed he lost his way in 2023 and that it was "really difficult."

The #48 driver said that all of it created "a lot of noise", which can make it difficult for his team. Having said that, he credited his team for being able to shut out that noise and have confidence every week.

Alex Bowman concluded by noting that it means a lot to him to overcome all the difficulties of the last two years, and do something many didn't think he could.