Alex Bowman works for Rick Hendrick who owns several car dealerships.

Alex Bowman won his first race Monster Energy NASCAR Cup race at Chicagoland Speedway last Sunday.  It was his first win at the Cup level in 134 starts.

So how did he celebrate?

Sure, he had the prerequisite all night party, but later in the week he bought a new car. Being a Chevrolet guy, and having his paychecks signed by Rick Hendrick, one of the largest car dealership owners in America, Bowman of course didn’t shop around.  After getting a chance to drive a Camaro ZL1 at the company’s Milford Proving Grounds last year, he knew what car it would be.

“I’ve always been a Corvette guy, so I almost didn’t want to like it and I fell in love with it,” Bowman said Thursday at Daytona International Speedway site of Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400. “I’ve been thinking about getting one and then I drove one at Spring Mountain a couple of weeks ago too. I said, ‘If I win a race, I’m going to get one’.”

Bowman made the trip to Jeff Gordon Chevrolet in Wilmington North Carolina, but he only had to drive one-way.  His boss gave him a helicopter to make the trip to the dealership.

“That was interesting,” Bowman joked. “It was like if ‘we get you the helicopter will you buy it today?’ It was like a whole new level of car salesman on that one, I was like ‘ok’.”

“It was interesting it was a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s pretty neat when you get to do stuff like that, I’m enjoying it so far. I was a good 3 ½ hour ride to break it in.”

That 3 ½ ride from Wilmington to Charlotte is measured at the posted speed limit. You’d think that a professional a race car driver in a brand-new high-powered Camaro would make it in much less time.

So the whole “I’ll buy one when I win” thing happened ???‍♂️

Thanks @JeffGordonSales and @HendrickAuto for convincing me to make more bad life choices… pic.twitter.com/cOnC4UqN0a

You’d be wrong.

“It was 4th of July,” Bowman said smiling. “There were a lot of police officers out watching the roads, I was not trying to get a speeding ticket, I don’t want to jack my insurance too bad.”

And Bowman added that upon further reflection, that helicopter ride might not have been free.

“I feel like the helicopter ride might have got incorporated into some type of doc fee, or…,” he said chuckling. “You know when you buy a car you get price 1 and then there’s like doc fee, tax, title, license, registration? I feel like there might have been a hidden fee that I missed there that was a helicopter ride, so I very well could be paying for it.”

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