Bowyer Quiets Naysayers With First Nextel Cup Victory

LOUDON, N.H. — The only suspense was in the victory celebration.
Clint Bowyer, the man some said didn’t belong in The Chase for the Nextel Cup because he hadn’t won a race in his two-year Cup career, destroyed the field at New Hampshire Int’l Speedway Sunday afternoon in the Sylvania 300.
Starting from the pole, Bowyer led 222 laps and outdistanced Jeff Gordon by 6.4 seconds.
Qualifiers for The Chase swept the top seven places as Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex, Jr. completed the top five, trailed by Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth. Casey Mears was the best-placed non-Chaser in eighth, with Ryan Newman ninth and J.J. Yeley 10th.
Among the other Chase drivers, Carl Edwards was 12th, Denny Hamlin 15th, Kevin Harvick 17th, Jeff Burton 18th and Kurt Busch 25th. Bowyer averaged 110.471 miles per hour through seven caution periods for 27 laps. Uniquely for a 43-car Nextel Cup field, every starter was running at the finish. 

HAPPY JACK: Clint Bowyer celebrates his first Nextel Cup victory with his crew Sunday at New Hampshire Int'l Speedway. Bowyer walked to victory lane after blowing up his engine doing a victory burnout. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

Bowyer, a former Kansas dirt tracker, driving the Jack Daniels Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing, put this one on ice early. He bolted to a straightaway lead before the competition caution scheduled at lap 35 due to the rainout of Saturday’s final practice.  Only a 39-lap stretch, which Stewart led following the second pit stop, saw Bowyer out of the lead for any reason other than the out-of-sequence stops of other teams. He ended Stewart’s run at the front with an effortless pass and drove home his superiority by leading 100 of the final 114 circuits of the 1.058-mile oval.  
“The only thing that could have beaten us was ourselves,” Bowyer said afterward, and no one in the room thought he was bragging. “When I came off the first corner it just had that feeling that you need. It rolled in the center all day long. You’ve got to be able to roll the center and carry momentum up off (the corner) and beat them to the gas. I was able to do that with just about everybody.”
As the only driver who made The Chase for the top 12 in regular season points while winless, and after letting a potential victory slip away at Richmond last week, Bowyer found the taste of victory especially sweet.

SHREDDED: A crew member carries the remains of Kevin Harvick's shredded right-front tire. (Alan Marler/HHP Photo)

“Even without the win, I felt we belonged in The Chase,” he asserted. “Once you’re in The Chase, you’ve got to go for broke. We didn’t make any mistakes and (crew chief) Gil Martin called a great race. When this engine is running on all eight cylinders it has a ton of horsepower.”
Martin’s intuition came into play on Friday’s first practice and may have set the stage for Sunday’s domination.
“In the first practice session we stayed out and made a lot longer race runs than we usually do. It was important to stay out there and make those race runs because he thought it was going to rain (Saturday) and sure enough it did,” Bowyer related.
Bowyer won the Bud Pole at a non-record 130.412 mph, and was ready to race in Sunday’s sunny and cool conditions.
“The only thing we did today was fire Goodyears at that thing,” Martin said Sunday. “We didn’t make any air pressure adjustments or anything. The car just liked everything it had under it today. This is a car we just built for the five Car of Tomorrow races in The Chase. The big picture was getting here; now we’re here. Some things we wanted to implement we didn’t want to do until we were in. Anyone who’s been around Richard (Childress) knows his conservative approach.”
Childress, by the way, was not at the track to see his youngest driver join the list of Nextel Cup winners. A noted big-game hunter, he was on a hunting expedition in Asia.
Stewart summed up the afternoon for the rest of the field. “I couldn’t get close enough to congratulate him,” the two-time Cup champion quipped.
With the seeding points from regular season victories figured in, Hendrick Motorsports teammates Gordon and Johnson left NHIS tied for The Chase lead with 5,210 points. Stewart is third at 5,200, and Bowyer fourth with 5,195.
Regarding that victory celebration — Bowyer laid down the obligatory blanket of tire smoke with his front straight burnout, but when the smoke cleared he merely stepped out, raised his arms in victory and congratulated his crew. Then he climbed back into the cockpit and nothing happened when he hit the starter. 
“I think I blew it up,” he admitted with a grin. “I thought the more smoke the better. I didn’t get the memo on that. I saw the temperatures going up. When I got back in it wouldn’t start. It’s the first time I ever walked to victory lane.”
Even if he gets a bill from the engine shop, it will be a small price to pay.