For Clint Bowyer, coming home usually means working on dirt cars and racing in front of friends and family at Kansas Speedway.
This week, the Emporia, Kan., native finds himself answering questions regarding the anticipated loss of the appeal that team owner Richard Childress waged against NASCAR after the No. 33 Chevrolet was deemed illegal at New Hampshire in postrace inspection.
“I’m very disappointed, not surprised at all,” Bowyer said of the National Stock Car Racing Commission's denial of the appeal. “I’ll just leave it at that. I’m looking forward to getting that behind me. This is an important weekend.
“I made some mistakes on the track last week (at Dover) that were uncharacteristic of myself, we made some mistakes as a team that were uncharacteristic and our heads weren’t 100 percent in the game. I don’t want this mess to bother us anymore. I’m at my home track, I’m having fun and that’s what I aim to do.”
After enjoying the ultimate high of qualifying for the final position in the Chase for the Sprint Cup at Richmond and winning the Chase kick-off race at New Hampshire the following week, Bowyer has faced the reality that any aspirations of winning the title ended at the NASCAR Research and Development center. Bowyer acknowledged the experience “sucks.”
“That’s an emotional rollercoaster that nobody wants to ride, trust me,” Bowyer said.
With the win, Bowyer was in second in the point standings, 35 points behind leader Denny Hamlin. Then the sanctioning body assessed its 150-point penalty on Sept. 22. Now, Bowyer finds himself in the Chase cellar, 235 points outside of first place.
“No, I think the championship hopes are done for myself,” Bowyer said. “The thing that I have to do is be the best teammate I can be. We have to bring a championship home.
“We still have two shots at that, but for myself and our race team, I’ve never finished out of the top five in the Chase and I want to continue that streak and want to continue that consistency in the Chase and I think that’s an attainable goal. The biggest thing is to be the best teammate I can be.”
Bowyer’s teammates, Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton, are fifth and seventh, respectively, in the point standings. Burton, the veteran driver at Richard Childress Racing, tried to explain to Bowyer to give the situation time to blow over.
“The thing I tried to impress on Clint is that we live in a moment and we think that in that moment everything revolves around that,” Burton said. “In two weeks, there’s going to be another conversation about some other controversy. I told him that at Dover and it took about 10 minutes. Maybe that was part of the plan.
“We all, at RCR, feel like each individual team is capable of winning a championship. ... It will be a learning experience, it will be something that the whole company is stronger for, he’s stronger for, wiser. At the end of the day, it will make the company better and make him better.”
Despite Bowyer’s setback, he’s not going to let the situation get him down. Bowyer has felt the support of the his own fans and others. And he feels the “best thing” about coming home is the “distractions” have helped him deal with the frustration. The homeboy’s fun started on Tuesday and continued with fan club appearances and extra-curricular racing throughout the weekend.
Given NASCAR’s appellate history — with 66 percent of infractions upheld in the initial appeal — Bowyer feels it’s best just to move on.
Although RCR has one last shot to plead its case to the National Stock Car Racing Chief Appellate officer John Middlebrook (former General Motors global sales and marketing chief) next Tuesday, Bowyer knows the battle is futile. According to NASCAR, 12 penalties have been appealed to the highest level. Of those, eight were upheld, three were reduced and one was overturned.
“In my opinion, their (NASCAR) minds are made up, it is what it is and if you want to be a part of this great thing we call a sport, you better just go on and enjoy what it is,” Bowyer said. “(Team owner Richard Childress is) fighting hard and I’m proud of the case that they put together. I think they worked very hard on it, they put a lot of time and energy and money into presenting a case that could prove less than a 16th of an inch how that car could be out.
“This sport is a very humbling sport, I can promise you. This is the first time that I’ve seen that kind of thing and in this sport, in racing in general, I can remember back racing at Lakeside (Speedway in Kansas), you can win three or four races in a row and blow up the next week and struggle to even get to the racetrack. That’s just the way racing is.”
