In late April, Alex Bowman flipped his Sprint Car in a High Limit Racing event at 34 Raceway in Iowa. It looked like your routine Sprint Car flip, but it’s result was anything but. Bowman was diagnosed with a fractured vertebra and missed his next four NASCAR Cup Series. The injury derailed Bowman’s NASCAR season, and now he’s made the decision to scale back his dirt racing efforts.

Bowman told Dave Moody on the “SiriusXM Speedway” show on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that he will be putting his Winged Sprint Car and Midget efforts on hold while placing a higher priority on his day job for Hendrick Motorsports.

“I’ve missed, what, 10 Cup races in the last two years for injuries? For Ally and Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet and everybody that puts so much into the 48 program, I can’t afford to miss more races,” Bowman told Moody. “I need to be in the car every week. You look at what it did to us this year, we go from being extremely strong and up front in points every week to a really tough rest of the year. I don’t need to do that again.”

Through the first 10 races of the Cup Series schedule prior to Bowman’s back injury, he had six top 10 finishes, three top five finishes, and was 10th in points. When he returned from his injury at May’s Coca-Cola 600, Bowman entered that race 17th in points. Following the injury, Bowman registered just one more top-five finish and four more top-10 finishes. 

In addition to the three points races and one exhibition race missed in 2023, Bowman missed five races with a concussion near the end of the 2022 season.

Bowman confirmed to FloRacing that he’s not just putting a pause on his Sprint Car racing, but all dirt racing, including racing a Midget at the Chili Bowl Nationals next month. Alex Bowman Racing, which he owns, has three entries filed for the 2024 event. Jake Swanson and C.J. Leary will be in the 55A and 55V cars respectively, while there is a TBA next to the third ABR entry for the 55X. While Bowman said an announcement on that car is coming soon, he did confirm that it will definitely not be him racing that car.

The Tucson, Arizona native told Moody on SiriusXM Speedway that the decision to put all of his dirt racing on hold was his own.

“It was mine, at first,” said Bowman. “I made the decision. And then my decision got reinforced by management. I’ll get back to it someday, but the decision it was definitely mine, but reinforced by smarter people than me.”

Bowman is not the only Hendrick Motorsports driver who missed races due to injury in 2023. His teammate, Chase Elliott, missed six races in the early part of the season due to a broken leg that he suffered while snowboarding.

Bowman is also not the only driver who has raced a lot on dirt in recent years. Elliott has also run a handful of dirt Late Model and Midget races, including the Chili Bowl in 2021 and 2022. William Byron has also made a few dirt starts in a dirt Late Model. And of course there is Kyle Larson, who races extensively on dirt in a variety of different cars, including Winged Sprint Cars.

Even though he once referred to racing Sprint Cars as his “golf game,” Bowman said he is comfortable with his decision to not race on dirt any time soon.

“It’s just going to be something that I’m going to push off until I’m at that point in my life where it’s what I want to do and it’s not going to take away from anything else. My job on Sundays is super important to me, and unfortunately this year I was doing something for fun that greatly took away from what I do on Sundays. I’m going to avoid that going forward.”

While Bowman won’t be in any of his three cars, race fans can still watch Alex Bowman Racing go for a Golden Driller in the 2024 Chili Bowl Nationals presented by NOS Energy Drink live on FloRacing January 8-13. Fans can subscribe to FloRacing by clicking here.