Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe Trade Helmets For Wrenches At Chili Bowl

NASCAR Cup Series stars Alex Bowman and Chase Briscoe have traded their helmets for wrenches during the 2026 Chili Bowl Nationals.

Jan 17, 2026 by Lee Spencer

TULSA, Okla.—When the green flag waves for the 40th Chili Bowl Nationals on Saturday night, two dirt trackers will be conspicuously absent from the field.

Chase Briscoe and Alex Bowman are perfectly content with their decisions to trade helmets for wrenches at the Tulsa Expo Raceway.

The 30-something NASCAR Cup contenders feel in this stage of their careers they’re better off joining the ownership ranks—and for very different reasons.

“Honestly, I think the biggest thing for me on the midget side of things is I just don't fit,” said the 6-foot, 1-inch Bowman. “My knees are in the steering box so bad. And I'm super uncomfortable driving the race car.

“I can be comfortable in a seat with no safety and no support because it gains so much room. But in a seat that's kind of acceptable, I just don't have enough room in the car.

“So it's tough. It's like basically the distance from my hips to my knees is just long and gets my knees in the steering box really bad.”

After two brutal shunts—one in a sprint car, the other in a stock car, and neither of Bowman’s making—the driver of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team has spent ample time on the sidelines due to injury. Racing a car without proper protection is out of the question.

“So that, and with a midget, I don't know that I'm that good at setting them up, but I'm probably better at setting them up than driving them. I really enjoy working on them.

“Obviously, I've been doing this for quite a while and having a lot of fun with it.”

It has been a Chili Bowl breakout year for Alex Bowman Racing. With the team downsized from four cars to two, both ABR cars locked into Saturday’s A-Main for the first time.

Briggs Danner finished second to Kyle Larson in Monday night’s feature. Bowman’s long-time friend and driver, C.J. Leary, finished second to Christopher Bell on Thursday—and nearly won.

Like Bowman, joining a NASCAR juggernaut has had its privileges for Briscoe. He has thrived on pavement—particularly since joining Joe Gibbs Racing in 2025.

So much so, even Larson and Briscoe’s long-time buddy Christopher Bell have intimated that the third-generation dirt-tracker should stick to stock cars.

“No, that's the truth, too,” Briscoe said with a laugh. “I would go and kind of struggle anyways. If I was going to these sprint car races and winning... but I was just trying to make the show.

“At Chili Bowl in the midget stuff, I was always more competitive, but a winged sprint car? I just didn't grow up winged sprint car racing. I grew up non-wing sprint car racing. No Cup owner is going to let you go run a non-wing sprint car.”

Briscoe’s transformation as a pavement racer has been eye-opening. Give the Mitchell, Indiana driver a good car and a decent crew, and he’ll be in the mix. Last year, Briscoe enjoyed a career-high three Cup wins, a series-best seven poles, 15 top fives, and 19 top 10s.

But even in the best dirt equipment, Briscoe isn’t comfortable putting the car where it needs to go.

“For me, on the Cup side, I can go and run up front and I'm competitive,” Briscoe said. “In the dirt world, I feel like I can do that in a midget.

“But the winged sprint car, I have a long way to go. And racing six to 10 times a year, you're just not going to compete with those guys that do it full time.”

Unlike Bowman, the 31-year-old father of three also balances the risk versus reward. Briscoe’s plate is beyond full with his day job and providing for wife Marissa, son Brooks, 4, and twin toddlers, Cooper and Collins.

As much time and effort as Briscoe has invested to achieve this station in life, he wouldn’t want to jeopardize his opportunity.

“For me, the main reason was having a family, and kids—especially now having three, it just gets harder,” Briscoe said. “To tell my wife, ‘Hey, look, I'm going to go run this race. I’ll see you and the kids when I get back,’ with the already busy schedule we have?

“Yeah, I just didn't want to get hurt, especially with the JGR opportunity. I knew I was never going to get another opportunity as good as that one.

“If I would go and race and get hurt, and lose my opportunity at JGR, I would have a hard time sleeping at night, 20 years down the road, 30 years down the road.”

Briscoe was also influenced by DJ VanderLey’s accident in 2022. VanderLey was Briscoe’s engineer during his stellar Xfinity Series run in the No. 98 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford. VanderLey was paralyzed racing a micro sprint in 2022.

“The day before he got paralyzed, I sat right in front of him on the plane going to Texas,” Briscoe said. “He told me that he and his wife were finally expecting. They’d had a lot of issues, kind of like Marissa and I had. That just really hit home.

“I obviously had friends pass away or get paralyzed, Bryan Clauson and guys like that. But DJ was the first person I was actually close to that got hurt in a dirt car.

“Whenever we had the twins, I just, I don't know, I just felt like that it was probably better for me to step away. Every time I went and ran one, in the back of my mind, I thinking, 'What would happen if I get hurt?'”

Briscoe admits that a driver should never race with that kind of mind-set.

For Briscoe and Bowman, both drivers’ competitive fires have been fueled with the ownership process. Chase Briscoe Racing provided cars for Jordan Kinser and Karter Sarff this week. Kinser finished 20th in Tuesday’s prelim feature. Sarff wheeled his midget to eighth in the A on Thursday night.

“Truthfully, when I go to the racetrack as an owner, I have way more fun than I would when I was driving,” Briscoe said. “The enjoyment of going and finding somebody like Karter Saarf and watching him, like I just enjoyed it more.

“So I just decided to step away.”

Bowman takes a more hands-on approach. He has been working on both midgets since the NASCAR season ended in November.

The Tucson native is here to win the race and the party.

“I would love to sit here and say that I'm doing this to give back to motorsports,” Bowman said. “But I just love it from a selfish point of view, right? I love this event. I love this week. It's so fun to go racing with your friends.

“So if I can give back and give guys opportunities to drive race cars at the same time, that's great. But for me, like I'm just here to try to win this race and obviously have a good time going racing with my friends.”