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Friday, Apr. 13, 2007
FORT WORTH, Texas – Clint Bowyer likes where he is in the Nextel Cup garage these days. Since team transporters are parked according to the points standings, with Bowyer in seventh, he’s pretty close to the main gate.
That paid off for Bowyer in another way Friday when rain delayed practice until late afternoon and then a line of severe storms wiped out qualifying and forced NASCAR to set the field for Sunday’s Samsung 500 based on its rulebook.
That puts Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton on the front row, with Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth behind them. Kyle Busch and Mark Martin are next, followed by Denny Hamlin and Bowyer on the fourth row.
Bowyer gets the No. 8 starting spot because, when qualifying is rained out, the field is set by owner points and Martin and Regan Smith, who’ve both driven the No. 01 Chevrolets this year, have that car ahead of him in those standings.
Still, for a second-year Cup driver who finished 17th in the points as a rookie, Bowyer’s early success this year has him happy – but not all that surprised.
“It's truly, honestly not a surprise to me,” said Bowyer, who has finished 11th or better in four of six races and might have made that five of six had it not been for a last-lap crash in the Daytona 500.
“Everybody has worked hard over the winter and we were strong at the end of last year. We just picked up where we left off.”
Bowyer, driving the No. 07 Chevrolets for Richard Childress Racing, finished fifth in the race here in November and was sixth at the similarly shaped Atlanta track earlier this year. The difference, he says, is confidence.
“You show up here knowing you're going to run up in the top five and race for a win, it's a lot easier to go out there and do it,” Bowyer said. “You get here questioning yourself, your equipment and your team, it just leads to excuses and every time you have just a little bit of a hiccup, well, that was to be expected.
“There are no more excuses anymore. We're a top-10 car and we need to be a top-five car. That's what we're after.”
Bowyer is still looking for his first career Cup victory, of course, and Texas is a place where something like that could happen. In the 12 Cup races held in this track’s history, nobody has won twice.
Bowyer, however, said one of the lessons he’s learning is that there are times to push and times not to. “If we can race for a win, you're darned right we're going to race for a win,” Bowyer said. “In Las Vegas, that's the one time this year we had a very fast car and I made the mistake of pushing too hard and trying to race for that win. I'm not going to do that again.
“If we have a fifth-place car, we're going to finish fifth. If we have a tenth-place car, we're going to finish tenth. There's no more 'we've got a 15th-place car and we're going to win with it. That doesn't work.”
While Friday’s weather worked out for Bowyer and the others at the top of the owner standings, it was certainly a Friday the 13th for some on the other end of the spectrum.
The top 35 in the standings will race on Sunday, as will Brian Vickers by virtue of his race victory at Talladega in 2006. Dale Jarrett made the field as a former champion, and then Ken Schrader, Scott Riggs, Dave Blaney, Mike Bliss, Paul Menard and Kenny Wallace because they were highest in the standings among those who’ve tried to make all six previous races this year.
David Reutimann, Jeremy Mayfield, John Andretti, A.J. Allmendinger, Michael Waltrip, Ward Burton, Scott Wimmer and Kevin Lepage failed to qualify.
Waltrip did not speak about his traffic citation received after rolling over in his personal vehicle last weekend. But a NASCAR spokesman said Waltrip was checked at the track medical center before he was allowed to practice in his No. 55 Toyota.