The normally jovial and happy Clint Bowyer has been in funk of sorts lately. Coming into Kentucky the Stewart-Haas Racing driver had been struggling. He finished 37th at Chicago and 34th at Daytona, crashing out of both races.
After starting seventh Saturday night, Bowyer found himself in the lead on lap 166 after scoring points in Stage 2. He led a total of 40 laps, but in the closing laps could only hold on to finish sixth. Still, Bowyer was happy to simply finish without crashing.
“It was a positive night for us,” Bowyer said. “We finally got some stage points the last two races.”
“It didn’t start out good, but we did a good job of working together, staying in it and not giving up. We got some track position and right there at the end,
“I don’t know. Our SHR cars are extremely fast, we show that in qualifying, but they aren’t the best in race trim and traffic yet. We have work to do there and we know that. We are going to the magic mile next weekend but given the month of June that we had, we had to get that monkey shook off our back.
“Right there at the end, you hate to give up fifth right there at the line but we could have just as easily wrecked in turn one on the restart and had another finish like we had in June. We needed a good solid finish and we got that and got some good positive mojo back with our team and we will build on it.”
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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