Story By: CAMDEN PROUD / OSWEGO SPEEDWAY – OSWEGO, NY – New Englander Dan Bowes has confirmed his intentions to return to Oswego Speedway for a third consecutive appearance ahead of this weekend’s A&P Auto Parts 50-lap ‘Road to the Championship’ event for the Novelis Supermodifieds.
Bowes made his first ever Oswego Supermodified starts in last season’s Shampine Memorial Twin 50’s and returned for the Twins this year, along with last weekend’s Twin 35’s presented by Burke’s Do It Best Home Centers and Bosco’s.
With six full Oswego features now under his belt and finishes of tenth three times, fifth, seventh, and fourteenth, the ISMA veteran will look to improve on his very impressive performance in the Jim Shampine Twins held May 26.
“The new wing package is helping us big time,” Bowes said. “Last year I was pretty nervous because we had no traction with the car. I figured we’d have the same issue this year, but right off the bat it had plenty of grip and we’ve been able to get it pretty fast so far.”
With ISMA’s first race of the season at Delaware Speedway this weekend, it came as a surprise to some fans that Bowes would be back at Oswego, but he says his family made the decision weeks ago that they would not be in Canada with the No. 25.
“We are skipping the first points race for ISMA,” Bowes confirmed. “That was what screwed us from coming back to Oswego last year. Once we got up there in the standings, we decided that it may be better to focus on the wing deal. We know we want to be back here a lot this year.”
Over the offseason, Bowes said his team made a few adjustments to ready the car for the new rear wing configuration at Oswego. It is something that he was absolutely thrilled about when the news broke. The Bowes team plans to support the Big O as much as they can in 2019.
“As soon as we heard of the new wing deal, we knew we wanted to be at Oswego a bunch, so we got to work on some things,” Bowes added. “We made a couple suspension adjustments with the setup and so far everything has been working really, really well.”
Bowes said that depending on work and scheduling, he planned to participate in at least the first three to four Oswego races, and then go from there. ISMA does have one conflicting event in July set for the 13th at Jukasa Motor Speedway.
“The plan was to come for the first three or four shows and go from there,” he said. “It depends on work, my shop is literally run by only me and my parents. When we race, everything shuts down and that’s why we are picking and choosing more and traveling a little bit less.”
Continuing he said, “I love Oswego. The first time we came here was just so surreal because of the history and names that have raced here. It just never, ever gets old for me. It’s a tough track. The weekly guys are always on top of their game so you have to do homework.”
Bowes stated that his big goal at the beginning of the season was to be in the top five by the end of the year, but he is already way ahead of schedule. He finished fifth in the first Oswego event of the season and nearly found the 16.1 second bracket in time trials one week ago.
“Things have gone really well,” offered Bowes. “My other goal is running the Classic, but I don’t know what we will do Classic Weekend. We don’t hold enough fuel and I would rather not have to go into that race knowing we need to pit. We have tons of time to build a bigger cell though.”
For now, Classic is a long way off. In the meantime, you can expect to see Bowes and his Brian Allergresso built No. 25 at Oswego on several more occasions leading up to the ISMA and Oswego double header on Labor Day Weekend.
The Pathfinder Bank SBS and 350 Supermodifieds will also be on the card for the program this Saturday, June 15. Time trials will begin at 6:20pm, with heat racing at 7:00pm. A driver autograph session will take place on the front straightaway at 5:15pm.