Alex Bowman, the 24-year-old driver who will start on the pole at the Daytona 500 on Sunday, has already made it clear that he does not like the nickname “Bowman the Showman,” which some stock-car fans have called him since he was a hotshot teenager.
Bowman, from Tucson, Ariz., is friendly and engaging but hardly as gregarious as the driver he replaced at Hendrick Motorsports, Dale Earnhardt Jr., who retired after 18 seasons as a full-time Cup driver. Fans voted Dale Jr. as NASCAR’s most popular driver 15 times.
“At this point, I’ve just gotta own it, right? I don’t see it changing,” the clean-cut Bowman said of the nickname at a news conference at Daytona last week. “I’m not the biggest fan of it, but it kind of is what it is at this point.”
NASCAR has had a few good nicknames over the years — “The Intimidator” for Dale Earnhardt Sr., “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville” for Bill Elliott and “Coo Coo" for Clifton Martin — but the series has never really needed them. The real names are too good. (How could anyone possibly improve on Dick Trickle?)
Besides, “Bowman the Showman” was taken.
Christopher Bowman, whom The New York Times described in his 2008 obituary as “a two-time United States figure skating champion acclaimed as a stylish, crowd-pleasing performer despite a long struggle with drug abuse,” was known as “Bowman the Showman” before he died at age 40.
That “Bowman the Showman” was an athletic success, finishing seventh at the 1988 Calgary Olympics and fourth at the 1992 Albertville Olympics, but he lived a brief and tragic life. Christopher Bowman weighed more than 300 pounds at his death.
Alex Bowman was first referred to as a showman when he won six of 21 races in 2011 and 2012 on the ARCA Series, two levels below Cup racing. He won two races on the second-tier Xfinity series in 2013 and moved to the top level with BK Racing the next year.
Bowman did not win a race in two years for back-of-the-pack teams but impressed Rick Hendrick. Bowman drove 10 races in 2016 as a replacement for Earnhardt, who had suffered a concussion, and then returned as a test driver in 2017. He was tapped in July to replace Earnhardt, a bit of a surprise.
Still, when Mountain Dew needed a spokesman to replace Earnhardt after last season, the company actually made up a person instead of moving straight to Bowman. The comedian Danny McBride played a driver, “Dewey Ryder,” who replaced Dale Jr. in a commercial in the fall.
“Dewey Ryder,” who wears a fire suit with mesh sleeves and shorts and uses words like “endorsementing,” was so campy and funny in what was supposed to be a one-off marking the end of Earnhardt’s career that Dale Jr. tweeted recently that he and “Dewey” had made another ad.
As the movie “Logan Lucky” proved again last fall, NASCAR people are good sports when Hollywood or Madison Avenue makes fun of it, even though the sport could use a few more funny guys. The new generation of drivers is not exactly dripping with humor — or, for that matter, beer, which is disappearing from NASCAR.
Bowman may turn out to be another Shaq. (My money is on the mullet-haired Ryan Blaney, who showed up for an interview with me last year on May 4 — May the Fourth — with a “Star Wars” T-shirt.) But it is more likely that Bowman will never be a showman.
“Go, Man” is too complicated. “Mo’ Man” is too forced. “Whoa, Man!” is too much. Considering his future, “No Man” or “Po’ Man” or “Tow Man” won’t work for him or any other drivers. But there is indeed a solution, right before our eyes. Follow me here.
Alex Bowman is driving the No. 88 car, right? And it just so happens that a pair of 8s on a poker table are referred to as, yes, “snowmen.” His career has a long way to go, but Bowman appears to be more easy-going and unflappable — cool — than fiery and contentious, like Tony "Smoke" Stewart. We shall see for sure Sunday, weather permitting.
So maybe this guy should be Bowman the Snowman. He’d even buy one of his own T-shirts.
