Bowyer laps up his first Nextel Cup win
LOUDON, N.H. - The only winless driver to make the 12-man Chase for the Nextel Cup Championship, Clint Bowyer was so fast and dominant in recording the first victory of his Nextel Cup career before 101,000 in yesterday's Sylvania 300, he even arrived at Victory Lane at New Hampshire International Speedway before his race car.
After Bowyer took the checkered flag, having led six times for 222 out of 300 laps - more laps than the 196 he had led in his entire career - spotter Mike Dillon radioed a request of crew chief Gil Martin from his perch atop the NHIS press box.
"Hey Gil, make sure you save me a hat down there, please," he said, before instructing Bowyer, "hey, come get you a burnout."
Bowyer complied, bringing his black No. 07 Jack Daniel's Chevrolet fielded by Richard Childress Racing to a stop just beneath NHIS's flagstand. He revved the motor, spun the tires, and filled the grandstands with a blinding plume of white smoke.
When the smoke cleared, Bowyer's car had quit on him.
"I think I blew it up," he said. "I thought the more smoke, the better. I didn't get the memo, I guess. I saw the temperatures going up. When I was done and going back in, it wouldn't start. The motor guys aren't going to be happy with us."
The car, however, didn't seize from the abuse. It simply ran out of gas, it was later reported to Martin, forcing Bowyer to make an unconventional walk into Victory Lane with his merry crew to celebrate his milestone triumph in the opener of NASCAR's 10-race playoffs.
"It was very different walking into Victory Lane. I've never done that before," said Bowyer, who became the 18th driver to post victories in all three of NASCAR's top series: Nextel Cup, Busch, and Craftsman Truck. "That was something new."
Martin said the team was well into the customary postrace hat dance before the winning Car of Tomorrow finally joined the festivities after it was pushed into Victory Lane. This, after it had carried Bowyer to a dominant victory that left Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart a distant runner-up and third, respectively.
"He was the class of the field, for sure," Stewart said. "It's fun to see guys get their first wins, and it's usually in dominating fashion. It's fun when you've got a car that drives like that."
"It's just incredible to even be a part of the Nextel Cup and to be able to drive these cars and have a team like Gil's put together on our Jack Daniel's Chevrolet," said Bowyer, who climbed eight spots to fourth in the standings with 5,195 points. Bowyer enters next Sunday's race at Dover, Del., 15 points behind the leaders, Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Gordon (5,210 points), and 5 points behind Stewart (5,200), who remained third.
"It's really an honor and a privilege and something I owe Richard a lot for," said Bowyer, whose car owner, a renowned big-game hunter, did not attend yesterday's race. "I wish he was here to celebrate this, but we finally got it done for him and did our job and did what we were supposed to do.
"It's such a fun thing to be able to celebrate with those guys," Bowyer added. "These guys work so hard week in and week out with their families and everything else, and to be able to finally win a race with those guys and be able to celebrate that, that means a lot."
Said Gordon, "Everybody's happy for Clint. To see a guy, especially in New York [during Thursday's Chase media blitz] when they were saying Clint Bowyer doesn't have a shot at the championship, [win] today was a real statement for him."
Bowyer, who joined Casey Mears (Lowe's Motor Speedway), Martin Truex Jr. (Dover, Del.) and Juan Pablo Montoya (Infineon Raceway) as the fourth first-time winner this season, had an inkling Friday he had a fast car when he laid down a blazing fast lap of 130.412 miles per hour to wrest the pole position from Truex.
Despite the rainout of Saturday's final practice session, Bowyer's sneaking suspicion that his car was good enough to win was confirmed early on in the race.
"When I came off the first corner, Martin kind of slipped and I was loose, but it just had that feeling that you need," he said. "It rolled to center [of the corner] awesome all day long. That was our strong point. That's what you've got to have here. You've got to be able to roll to center and carry momentum up off [the corner] and beat 'em in the gaps. I was able to do that with just about everybody."
Only two other drivers were able to hang out at the front for more than 20 laps: Stewart, who led 39 laps, and Kyle Busch, who led 21 laps before handing it back to Bowyer on Lap 187. "Once he got the lead, wow," Gordon said. "He was incredible."
That much was evident on Bowyer's last green-flag pit stop for four tires and two cans of fuel on Lap 236. Martin, though, made no adjustments to the car, in keeping with what they did to it for the entire race - virtually nothing. "The only thing we did today was fire Goodyear tires at that thing," he said. "We didn't make any air pressure adjustments or anything. The car just liked everything it had under it today."
With Dillon counseling him, "Treat your race car good; treat your brakes good," Bowyer did precisely that while methodically working his way through the field to move from seventh to first when he inherited the race lead for the sixth and final time after Dale Earnhardt Jr. pitted under green on Lap 251. He stretched his lead over Gordon to more than five seconds with 40 laps to go before his car began to tighten, enabling Gordon to close within three seconds of Bowyer. It proved to be only a token challenge as Bowyer pulled away for his first career win.
"I just want to sit back and enjoy this first win," Bowyer said, when asked about his mind-set for the remaining nine Chase races. "Hopefully, [Martin] will want to bring this same car [to Dover]. I'll be pretty adamant about that and I'll be at the shop with the wax out, waxing it. But it's moving forward. We've got a legitimate [shot] at this. Not saying that we didn't, but it just opens your eyes.
"It opened a lot of people's eyes and it certainly did for us as well."
Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com.
