JOLIET, Ill.—Nothing in the NASCAR rule book has drawn more attention lately than the governance of restarts, but Clint Bowyer has a simple cure for those inclined to hit the gas before they get to the designated restart zone.
Bowyer believes all NASCAR has to do is make one call for jumping a restart, penalize the offending driver, and the problem will be solved.
“NASCAR should do this, call them out,” Bowyer said on Thursday at Chase Media Day at The Murphy in downtown Chicago. “That’s all you’ve got to do. When I was a weekly racer and racing all over the country… you didn’t race under the same promoter every week. So one guy would be a hard ass and then you knew when you went to that race track that that guy – whether it was the flagger or the ring leader, the owner, whoever that guy was – he was going to call you on it and it was his decision.
“If you were wrong and didn’t like it, take your ass home. That was the mentality of C. Ray Hall in Wichita, for instance, at 81 Speedway. That was his mentality. Then you went to another race track, and you knew that that guy wouldn’t call you on it and it was pretty much a gray area and you could get away with a little bit more than you could with ol’ C. Ray down the road in Wichita.
“That being said, all you’ve got to do is call somebody on it once—that will fix the problem. That’s all you have to do. Call them—whether it’s me or anybody else, and if you do that once, I won’t do it again.”
Aspen Dental expands commitment to Danica Patrick
Danica Patrick filled in another piece of her sponsorship puzzle on Friday with the announcement that Aspen Dental would extend and expand its support for Patrick’s No. 10 Stewart-Haas Racing team in 2016.
Aspen Dental will be on the hood of Patrick’s Chevrolet for four races next year, doubling its 2015 presence.
Last month, Patrick introduced Nature’s Bakery as the primary of her car for 28 races next year. Long-time sponsor GoDaddy had announced earlier it would not be returning to her car in 2016.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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