“We want to go down and sit on the front row,” Blake Harris lays down his plans for the maiden cup season as Alex Bowman’s crew chief

Alex Bowman and Blake Harris have deep-rooted connections to midget and dirt racing and it can be an integral part of the teams’ development in 2023.

“We want to go down and sit on the front row,” Blake Harris lays down his plans for the maiden cup season as Alex Bowman’s crew chief

Blake Harris and Alex Bowman

The 2023 Cup season will make a new beginning for the No:48 team and Alex Bowman. The team will be led by HMS’s new crew chief Blake Harris, who helped Mitchell MacDowell to produce his career-best performance last year with Front Raw Motorsports. Harris was appointed Bowman’s new crew chief after Greg Ives stepped down and took over NASCAR’s Le Mans entry, Garage 56.

The No:48 crew had a season to forget in 2022. They were the worst performing team of Rick Hendrick and Bowman being side-lined due to concussion after the Texas playoff race crash also didn’t help.  He was able to score just one win the whole season and though he scored consistent top-10 finishes, but was never a contender for wins in most of those races.

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Blake Harris is responsible for getting the team back on track and ensuring a solid year for Bowman. A playoff finish won’t be enough for Bowman in 2023, he needs to secure the championship 4 entry, something that he has never achieved in his senior NASCAR career. His best-ever finish was P6 with the No:88 team in 2020.

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“As far as the 48 is concerned, we want to go down and sit on the front row and bring a car that we can race with. If that takes tuning on it throughout the rest of the weekend to get it there for Sunday, that’s what we are willing to do,” Blake Harris told NASCAR SiriusXM Radio.

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Alex Bowman’s No:48 crew already understands the system and Harris needs to keep the continuity

Alex Bowman
Alex Bowman

Blake Harris is happy with the fact that he has the same crew Greg Ives had over the years to take over. He said, “For the most part, it is the same guys that Alex (Bowman) has known and Greg (Ives) has had around him. That’s important to me. I feel like I had a lot of that when I went to Front Row (Motorsports),”.

He pointed out that having people that understand the system around him makes the process of team integration quicker. Harris says, “For me to come on board in my first time being a crew chief in the Cup Series with some engineers and people that were already in place that understood the systems, it just feels like it speeds up that process,”.

Harris is now focused on understanding the race notes left for him by Harris. He said, “We’ve spent as much time together in the shop going through things together. I spent a lot of my time going back through all their race notes, trying to better understand what he needs and what his comments are throughout the season,”.  

He is looking forward to the LA clash as he finds it the right place to develop team communication. He added, “We certainly are doing everything we can to accelerate that learning curve. Looking forward to LA especially, non-points race to start the year off and work on those communications with Alex and the entire team really,”.

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