Alex Bowman, Daniel Suárez accuse each other of 'dumb' moves at Darlington
Alex Bowman and Daniel Suárez were far from happy with each other following the Southern 500 at Darlington.
In one of the more fascinating incidents during Sunday’s race, the Chevrolet duo was involved in a wreck that ruined both of their nights. With Stage 3 winding down, Bowman laid down not one, but two huge blocks on Suárez, and the Trackhouse Racing star wasn’t going to let the No. 48 get away with it.
Instead of lifting into the turn, Suárez decided to stay in the gas, and while he was ultimately in the right in the eyes of many, it ended up wrecking both cars, and collected Harrison Burton as well. Afterwards, both drivers had some choice words for each other.
“You can block once and it’s okay. We give and take. I could have easily put him into the inside wall. I didn’t do that because I’m not like that. But when I went to his outside, he blocked me again. I wasn’t going to lift a second time,” Suárez told reporters, following the incident. “I gave him a break once, I won’t give him a break twice. So like, he has to be smarter. He’s smarter than that.
“I don’t know. He has five minutes of being a dummy, and he used it tonight I guess.”
Continuing, Suárez took to Twitter afterwards to double-down on his comments, and claim he wasn’t surprised by Bowman’s actions.
“I’d use other words but that wouldn’t be appropriate so let’s stick to ‘dumb move.’ I’m not surprised by now,” Suárez tweeted. “My team deserved better today, we struggled in the short run but were strong in the long run, our @Freeway_Ins Chevy was a top10 car. We’ll bounce back in Kansas.”
Of course, there’s two sides to each wreck, and the Hendrick Motorsports driver responded to Suárez’s comments, firing back at the entire No. 99 team.
“Obviously it didn’t work, so he chose not to lift and to crash us. But every time I race the No. 99, he does something dumb,” responded Bowman, via NBC. “Whether it’s his crew chief flipping me off on the way to the airport, or just anytime I’m around him, he blocks me really aggressively. So that’s just part of it sometimes, and obviously the block didn’t work out. Looking back, I shouldn’t have done it. We were just really tight on the short-run, and I knew I needed to hang on to whatever track position I could. So kind of just got a bad run off of four being tight. Saw he had a run. Knew if I could hold on for a couple laps, that we’d be really good.
“But yeah, he wants to call me dumb, every time I’m around him there’s a big block. So that’s just part of racing sometimes.”
While both Alex Bowman and Daniel Suárez are out of the NASCAR Playoff picture, it’ll be something to behold each time they’re beside each other on the track moving forward. A budding rivalry seems to be beginning between two bright stars.