{"id":105207,"date":"2026-11-12T18:44:04","date_gmt":"2026-11-12T18:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/mike-bowman-on-world-series-of-pro-mod-if-you-win-this-race-youre-a-certified-badass-forever\/"},"modified":"2026-11-12T18:44:04","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T18:44:04","slug":"mike-bowman-on-world-series-of-pro-mod-if-you-win-this-race-youre-a-certified-badass-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/drag-racing\/uncategorized\/mike-bowman-on-world-series-of-pro-mod-if-you-win-this-race-youre-a-certified-badass-forever\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Bowman on World Series of Pro Mod: \u201cIf You Win This Race, You\u2019re A Certified Badass Forever\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Bowman has a line about the Drag Illustrated World Series of Pro Mod, and he has been saying it for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you win this race, you\u2019re a certified badass forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

He would know. Seven drivers have won it. Nobody has won it twice. And only one of them will ever be able to say he won the first one.<\/p>\n

Bowman was not short on trophies before August of 2017. He had NMCA championships. He had been the first Pro Mod racer on the West Coast to run in the fives. He had won the Street Car Super Nationals in Las Vegas the year before. Ask him today which win sits at the top, and he does not hesitate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again, the biggest race I ever won was WSOPM.\u201d<\/p>\n

He almost was not in it.<\/p>\n

The first World Series of Pro Mod was a 16-car invitational at Bandimere Speedway, $100,000 to the winner and not a dollar to anyone else. A couple of weeks before the race, one of the invited drivers blew up his engine. Wes Buck had a hole in the most talked-about field in doorslammer racing, and fans online were already making noise about who should fill it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMike was the first guy I thought of,\u201d Buck says.<\/p>\n

When the call came, Bowman had about a day to change the converter and the gears, rework the tune-up and point the truck at Denver. He put a crew together when he got there. First, though, he had to ask his boss at Coburn Equipment for the time off. Ray Coburn\u2019s answer has become part of the race\u2019s history: \u201cHeck yeah! It\u2019s a hundred thousand dollars; you better go get you some of that!\u201d<\/p>\n

That is the part Buck keeps coming back to. Not that the last man into the field won it, but who that man was.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love all these guys, but I don\u2019t know that we could have asked for a better inaugural champion than Mike Bowman,\u201d Buck says. \u201cHe\u2019s an incredible representation of what Pro Mod drag racing is all about. He works on the car himself, he can fabricate, he can build engines \u2013 hell, he drives his own rig to the track. He\u2019s been successful in his life, but he\u2019s a blue collar dude, works his ass off, and he\u2019s just about the last person anyone wants to see in the opposing lane. He\u2019s a racer\u2019s racer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The race was run in the dark, in a manner of speaking. Drag Illustrated had shut the scoreboards off for the entire week and cut the time slips in half. Nobody knew what anybody ran. So almost nobody knew that in testing, Bowman\u2019s \u201969 Chevelle had made the first five-second pass by a door car in the history of Bandimere Speedway. He made six runs and parked it.<\/p>\n

\"Mike
2017 | Mike Bowman\u2019s \u201969 Chevelle lights the tires at Bandimere Speedway during the inaugural Drag Illustrated World Series of Pro Mod. Photo: Drag Illustrated Archives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He beat Derek Menholt. He ran 5.997 to beat Michael Biehle and 6.024 to beat Shane Molinari. In the final he lined up against Steven Whiteley, who had beaten him on the starting line in Charlotte earlier that year. \u201cI can\u2019t let him beat me again on the tree,\u201d Bowman told himself. He left first, .024 to .029. Both cars overpowered the racetrack. Bowman gathered his up and got there first.<\/p>\n

\"Steven
2017 | Steven Whiteley congratulates Bowman after the $100,000 final round. Photo: Drag Illustrated Archives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His wife, Kristy, his daughters, and his stepson were all there to see it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe emotions in the winner\u2019s circle were insane,\u201d Buck says. \u201cMike was beside himself. I think he was in shock. And we\u2019re not talking about a guy who\u2019d never won a drag race before. This is a champion, a guy who\u2019s won a lot of big races.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mike
2017 | Mike Bowman celebrates his $100,000 victory at Bandimere Speedway with John Bandimere Jr. and Wes Buck. Photo: Joe McHugh<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bowman tried to put a number on it afterward. \u201cThis was like winning 10 NHRA Pro Mod races all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buck was not doing much better.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Mike won, honestly, I teared up,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it wasn\u2019t really because Mike won. It was because I knew we\u2019d done something big. I knew this was the start of something special. A drag racing tradition was born in that moment, and I don\u2019t think there was a person on the property that night who didn\u2019t feel it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Mike
Bowman and the championship belt on the cover of Drag Illustrated Issue 125.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Here is what the win did to Mike Bowman. He came back the next year to defend it and lost to the eventual champion by seven thousandths of a second. He spent years racing on television with Street Outlaws: No Prep Kings. At one point he put his Pro Mod Chevelle, a near replica of the car that won in Denver, up for sale. Then the World Series of Pro Mod came back, and he took the for-sale sign off it. He could not watch that field roll through the gate without him.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe my heart\u2019s just with the Pro Mod,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He has been chasing the second one ever since, and he is not shy about why. \u201cI\u2019m not coming because I want to be second.\u201d And if he ever does it? \u201cThat\u2019d be off the charts insane. It would mean everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mike
Bowman has been chasing a second World Series of Pro Mod title ever since. Photo: Drag Illustrated Archives<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Something else came out of that night. \u201cIt really was the beginning of what has been a long-lasting friendship,\u201d Buck says. \u201cMike and I have been close ever since. I\u2019ve gotten to know his family, watched his daughters grow up, and it\u2019s just been a joy and a privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n

Six more names have gone on the list since 2017: Stevens. Oksas. Hyde. Ward. King. Stanfield. None of them can have what Bowman has.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody can ever take away that first race for me,\u201d he says. \u201cI know what it feels like to win a hundred grand and to win the most badass race there is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buck puts it this way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere can only be one first-ever. That\u2019ll always be Mike Bowman. Despite all that he\u2019s accomplished in drag racing, that\u2019s how this sport knows him and will forever recognize him \u2013 the winner of the first World Series of Pro Mod. When Pro Mod went mainstream, Mike Bowman was the last man standing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Drag Illustrated World Series of Pro Mod returns March 5-7, 2027, at Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas.<\/p>\n

See all seven champions.<\/a> Get on the ticket list.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The post Mike Bowman on World Series of Pro Mod: \u201cIf You Win This Race, You\u2019re A Certified Badass Forever\u201d<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Bowman has a line about the Drag Illustrated World Series of Pro Mod, and he has been saying it for years. \u201cIf you win this race, you\u2019re a certified badass forever.\u201d He would know. Seven drivers have won it. Nobody has won it twice. And only one of them will ever be able to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}