Shut up and drive.
That was spotter Kevin Hamlin’s message to his driver Alex Bowman during the NASCAR Cup Series race yesterday at Dover when the driver of the #48 car was doing a bit too much complaining and not enough driving.
Bowman had a good run yesterday, keeping his Hendrick Motorsports Chevy inside the top 10 for much of the Würth 400. But the problem for Bowman, apparently, was that his teammate Kyle Larson was also there – and he didn’t like how the #5 car was racing him.
Towards the end of the second stage, Larson was able to hold off his teammate for the stage win by aero blocking (basically, taking away Bowman’s lane and taking the air off of the car behind him).
But Bowman didn’t appreciate the move from his teammate, and complained about it to his team over the radio:
“Much appreciated, 5 car.”
His spotter, though, didn’t want to hear his driver whining:
“He’s not going to pull over for you. You’ve got to go f*cking earn it.”
He also gave Bowman some advice for the rest of the race:
“These dudes aren’t going to give you sh*t all day. You’ve just taken. You’ve done awesome. Drive like a d*ck the rest of the race. Stay locked in. F*ck them all. Let’s go.”
But the driver didn’t seem to appreciate the pep talk from Hamlin:
“Kevin, just let me drive the f*cking race car.”
Hamlin also keyed up the radio to tell Bowman to just “shut up and drive,” although it’s not clear whether that piece of advice was on channel 2 (which the driver can’t hear and is only broadcast to the crew chief) or if it went straight to the driver’s seat:
“Whining about a teammate racing for the win. Just shut the f*ck up and drive it.”
Yikes.
Kevin Hamlin is a veteran spotter, and recently went viral for a fiery exchange he had while spotting for Truck Series driver Daniel Dye, threatening to quit after a miscommunication caused him to believe that his driver had told him to “kiss my ass” during the race:
After the heated exchange, Hamlin announced that he would be stepping away from the Truck Series to focus all his efforts on spotting for Bowman.
And Bowman ended up salvaging a decent finish at Dover, bringing home 8th place in what’s been a pretty mediocre season so far – especially when you consider that all of his teammates have already won a race this year (and Larson looked to be in position to win another one but couldn’t get by Denny Hamlin at the end).
Seems like that pressure’s getting to everybody on the 48 team…
