Clint Bowyer Needs A Win In NASCAR

By ESPN

Clint Bowyer should have considered himself the biggest Brad Keselowski fan late in the Brickyard 400. A Keselowski victory would have helped Bowyer's postseason chances, while a Kasey Kahne win would somewhat cripple them.

But Bowyer couldn't get himself to do it. He and Kahne arrived on the NASCAR scene in the mid-2000s, became friends along the way and their toddlers were born 12 months apart, making Cash Bowyer and Tanner Kahne natural play pals.

"I've been close with Kasey," Bowyer said. "We kind of came in at the same time. We share a lot of interests together. I was really happy for him.

"His story has been pretty down here lately. He was up at my house swimming with Tanner the other day and he just wasn't himself."

Kahne's victory Sunday swatted away any Bowyer hopes of making the playoffs by points. Kahne is 20th in the Cup standings, but his victory propels him in and has cut the number of winless drivers who have made the playoffs to at most four.

Thanks to a crash at Indianapolis, Bowyer now ranks fifth among the winless. He went from 54 points ahead of the provisional playoff cutoff with seven races remaining to 33 points behind with six left in the NASCAR regular season.

"To be dead honest with you, that's a relief," Bowyer said Tuesday. "I hate racing looking over your shoulder, worrying about just being solid and do what the leader does and just get you a good finish because without somebody winning, you're going to be a part of the Chase [playoffs].

"I want to be part of the Chase because we went out and won a race and earned it. Some of these cars that are in the Chase, they're 20th place. That's not a Chase-worthy deal, but those are the rules."

Riding a 169-race winless streak into the NASCAR Cup race this weekend at Pocono Raceway, Bowyer needs a win regardless of what it means when it comes to the postseason. Bowyer has three runner-up finishes and eight top-10 finishes in the 20 races but dropped to 11th in the points after finishing 30th at Indianapolis.

"We've got to get a win -- there's no ifs, ands or buts about it," Bowyer said. "Kasey winning that race didn't help our cause any, but I've said from Day 1, I want to win a race.

"I need to win a race for myself, for our race team and everything else. ... Without winning a race, even if you made the Chase, I don't feel like I'm back where I'm capable of being."

But what about the playoffs? Does making the playoffs define one's season?

"It's a big deal," Bowyer said. "And the answer is yes. But when I see teams that are 20th in points and haven't hardly scratched the top 10 make it, I think that diminishes the value of the Chase and the playoffs.

"If I'm a promoter and I have 16 teams that are going to compete for a championship, I want my 16 best teams. I don't want a team in it that I know is going to go out in the first round in."

The point of the playoff system, though, is to have that underdog as part of the championship hunt. Kind of like the conference champions in the NCAA tournament who end up as the 15th or 16th seeds.

"The problem is in our world is you don't start to trip across something to start winning races," Bowyer said.

Bowyer spoke Tuesday while unveiling his paint scheme -- a tribute Carolina Ford Dealers design to recognize Mark Martin's success in what is now the Xfinity Series -- for Darlington Raceway in September. He was a little sore from the violent Indianapolis crash, where he tried to avoid running into the cars in front of him, darted into the inside wall and bounced back into traffic, where he got tagged and spun around by teammate Kurt Busch.

"It was just a weird situation where we were bearing down on them so fast, it was kind of just an evasive move to try to not wreck and ended up wrecking big time," Bowyer said. "Thank God for safety [initiatives].

"I'm telling you -- that was a hard lick. Then Kurt hit me hard again. It's amazing you can walk out of those things and head to the house and wake up a little bit sore instead of in a hospital."

As he bounced back from the wall, Bowyer barely missed the tire barrier in front of the foam attenuator at the start of the outside pit-road wall.

"That impact on a blow like that, it was going to shoot me back out there anyway even if there wasn't a SAFER barrier on it," Bowyer said. "Where I was lucky is I didn't catch the end of that pit-road wall.

"I spun back around a couple of different times. I saw it. I knew I was pretty close to being teed up to it, and that's when I kind of hunched down and said, 'Oh s---. Hope I don't hit that.' "

The tire barrier is designed to keep drivers from hitting the blunt edge of the wall.

"Usually when you hit those [tires], those are the ones that throw you up in the air," Bowyer said. "You don't want to be up in the air with cars coming at you on that narrow straightaway. Honestly, as fast as things happen, that was going through my mind."