Clint Bowyer Is A Throwback To Days Gone By

Clint Bowyer admitted to a bit of trepidation before heading to Daytona Int’l Speedway last month for pre-season testing.
“I called Jeff Burton and I was freaking out before I went down to Daytona to test,” Bowyer recalled. “I was nervous about this season and was afraid I forgot how to drive and I wasn’t going to be any good. His answer was you wouldn’t be a good race car driver if you weren’t nervous and I believe that.
“Richard Childress used to tell me Dale Earnhardt would come up to him and say, ‘Man, I don’t know if I can get it done for you this year. I don’t know if I can do it.’ He probably was nervous about it.”
Strange considering that Bowyer finished third in the Cup standings last season and scored his first victory in only his second season in the series.
Bowyer admitted to wondering if he could not only match last year’s impressive accomplishments, but improve upon them.
“I think any good racer worries about that,” Bowyer admitted. “That’s the competitive nature in you. You want to go out there and be the best. I’m constantly worried about that. It’s something that’s in you.”
Bowyer probably shouldn’t worry because he’s a star and a bit of a throwback to the race driver of the past.
He didn’t come to the Sprint Cup Series from IndyCar racing or Formula One; he came from the dirt tracks of Kansas and Missouri.
That makes the driver from Emporia, Kan., a bit unique in this day and age because he’s a product of the simplicity of grass-roots racing.
“It is something to be proud of,” Bowyer said. “Carl Edwards and Jamie McMurray and myself; we all came from the Midwest. We worked hard and went through the struggles of making it and definitely had those aspirations. It took a lot of hard work and dedication and time on everybody’s part. It’s not just something you can do yourself.
“I had good parents that worked their butts off for me to get me where I’m at and had good people surrounding me. It definitely didn’t happen because we had a big pile of money sitting there.”
Bowyer grew up as a motocross racer until he was 16. That’s when he decided to quit because he didn’t enjoy it any more.
As a competitive individual, he didn’t believe his skill level was where he needed to be to achieve big-time success, so he ended up working at a Goodyear tire store in Emporia.
“My boss had started racing a street-stock car and I started going with them,” Bowyer said. “The group I was hanging around with then, that’s what I started doing. I was going to the races with them and was enjoying it and having fun and looked like something I wanted to be a part of.
“We drug an old 1978 Camaro out of the weeds that had been a retired stock car. We cleaned it up, went to the junkyard. We blew several motors up before we ever figured out what we were doing. I wouldn’t trade those days in for anything. It was a lot of fun.
“When my dad got involved, when I began racing early he was still racing motorcycles with my older brother. He got to go to the dirt track with me and enjoy it himself. When he became a part of it, business really picked up.”
 With family support behind him, Bowyer started tearing up the local dirt tracks.
When McMurray moved into the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, the crew that helped him in the late-model stock-car racing ranks came over to Lakeside Speedway one night when Bowyer was competing in a dirt race.
“We got to talking and basically asked me if they built the car, would I race it?” Bowyer remembered. “We put something together, went to I-70 and won our first race ever and won the championship that year. It was fun times and I had ties to both of them one way or the other.
“In 2001 and 2002 is when my career started to pick up in the dirt modified ranks. I won multiple championships both years, won a regional championship in the Weekly Racing Series. That is when things started to open my eyes up that maybe I could make a living doing this. In 2002, I ran Lakeside on dirt on Friday nights and asphalt at I-70 on Saturday night. In 2003, we ran a limited schedule in the asphalt touring series and raced in some dirt races.”
Good fortune would come Bowyer’s way in a most unusual way.
“We got an opportunity in an asphalt car, an old MB-2 car, went to Nashville and probably had the day that made my whole career,” Bowyer recalled. “We went over there with little or nothing.
“Looking back at it knowing what I know now, what we accomplished that day was pretty spectacular and something that just doesn’t happen. We went over there and none of us had really raced at that level. I got hooked up with Trent Owens, a guy that worked at Braun Motorsports and is still a good friend of mine. He came to the track with four springs, four shocks and a briefcase. We ran those four shocks and springs, qualified seventh and led. If it hadn’t been for staying out there at the end, we would have probably won that race. We finished second.
“That was the day that during a rain delay, Richard Childress was watching the race on Speed Channel and gave me a call.”
Bowyer is the first to admit that fate can often intervene in a race driver’s career.
“Absolutely,” Bowyer said. “Would another opportunity have come along? Yes. Would it have been the right opportunity? Who knows?
“Nonetheless, timing was a big part of everything and it was a big part of what happened to me.”
Bowyer won the Midwest Championship in the NASCAR Weekly Racing Series in 2002. He became a developmental driver for Richard Childress Racing and eventually climbed his way through the Busch (Nationwide) Series and earned a full-time Cup ride in 2005.
He’s made the most of his success and has become a legitimate contender, not only for this year’s Daytona 500 but for the Sprint Cup title.
“A few years ago, we had a development driver here named Clint Bowyer and he was standing in the corner while everyone was talking to the other drivers,” Childress said recently. “Look at him now.”