RFK Racing president compares team to his time at Golden State Warriors

For new RFK Racing president Chip Bowers, 2026 will be his first full season in the NASCAR Cup Series after a career across sports. With stops in the NBA, MLB, and elsewhere, Bowers has the experience to build RFK’s brand off and on the track.

Chip Bowers was with the Golden State Warriors for three NBA championships and a multitude of wins. During that time, he found that he had learned a very valuable lesson when the Warriors were not a championship-caliber team and went through struggles after so much success.

Just because the results weren’t what they had hoped for, or the outlook was not as bright, didn’t stop the preparation from being championship-level. Bowers explained to Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal.

“When I got to the Warriors, we were coming off a lottery team that Steph [Curry] had had ankle troubles – we weren’t expected to win. And what I learned in that experience is you operate on a parallel path, truly believing on the competition side that they’re going to achieve their objective, and we’ve got to be as a business prepared to take full advantage of that, and we’re going to do that at RFK Racing.”

This season was a season of what-ifs and almosts for RFK Racing. None of the three Cup Series drivers won a race, but they sure came close a number of times. That includes the championship finale at Phoenix. Brad Keselowski was leading coming out of Turn 3. Then, Ryan Blaney got under him coming out of Turn 4. That was the race.

So, how do you react in those moments? Do you show up to the next race and let it affect your performance? NASCAR and racing are about being quick. That includes your memory. When things don’t go your way, you have to forget about it. When you have 26 race weekends in a row, you have to forget everything. One race to the next, no matter how good or bad you were before.

Chip Bowers has so much experience outside of NASCAR. It will be very interesting to see how that experience translates to the sport. He’s worked with multiple NBA and MLB franchises. There have been a lot of great marketing efforts during his time with those organizations.

RFK Racing feels like it is on the cusp of being great. When Brad Keselowski joined after the 2021 season, it was a massive deal. He revamped a lot at the facility. It has done a lot to improve the branding and performance of the organization. Now, Bowers is, ideally, going to take that to the next level.