A few weeks ago Clint Bowyer said he was optimistic about his Chase chances. Times have changed and lately Bowyer isn’t very optimistic about anything. From the Chase to his contract and even his racing luck, Bowyer said it just hasn’t been his year.
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[/media-credit]Friday in Richmond he stated he was ready to start over, everything over. That’s because Bowyer hasn’t had much success this season and he needs a lot of luck in Richmond in order to make NASCAR’s postseason. He sits 14th in points after a wreck last week in Atlanta knocked him out of top 10 contention.
Now it’s either win and you’re in or hope for the best. And the best isn’t exactly easy to figure out.
“We had an interesting situation where we had all the scenarios here,” said Bowyer. “Some mathematician is getting very smart in all the scenarios that he had worked out for the press conference [Thursday].”
Bowyer then joked that if his competitors “fell over dead” and he could win the race and then he would get into the Chase. Silly, is how Bowyer described the weekend but said that he doesn’t feel the pressure of it. Instead, the focus is on not only winning Saturday night but the rest of the season.
“I’m here to win the race and if something crazy happens and crazy things happen in this world of racing, I’ll be glad to be a part of it,” he said of the Chase.
If not, Bowyer has plenty of other things to worry about. His team for one, which he says has been struggling for weeks and frustrations mounting. With only weeks left in the 2011 season, Bowyer’s ready to put it to bed.
“It just wasn’t our year,” he said. “We didn’t do a good enough job and it’s up to us to cap off the season well. We’re not finished with the season. Just because you’re not part of the Chase doesn’t mean you don’t go out and try to end the season on a positive note. That’s important to me and it’s important to our race team and it’s important to our sponsors.”
Making the Chase, going to the season ending banquet and taking part in the festivities of Champion’s week is something Bowyer loves to do. He wants to do it again this December but says it won’t be the end of the world if he doesn’t. Sometime down the road he’ll have another opportunity but the question has become where he’ll do that.
While he says he won’t deal with the pressure of the championship he has been dealing with trying to put together a new contract. Not immune to the rumors that are running rampant about his future, recent comments by team owner Richard Childress have only made things worse.
Is he going – as some have read into – or is he staying as Bowyer says he wants to? Working toward a new deal and finalizing it has been more difficult and extended than Bowyer would have liked.
“There’s a lot of pressure,” he said about his upcoming decision. “Unfortunately it all comes together at once. It would have been nice to have the future out of the way three months ago, but it’s just not the case. It’s tough in today’s world and you’ve got to be tough as well. You’ve just got to get through it and it is what it is.”
When the deal gets done, relief will be felt all around. Focus will go back on what matters most, on track. For now though, Bowyer doesn’t want to think about what could be.
“Oh, it would be heartbreaking, a tough deal,” he said about going to a new team. “That’s family to me and it means a lot to me. I don’t forget where I was standing when I got a phone call to get me this opportunity and change my life. It would be big. But the world goes on. You have to make decisions and those are performance-driven, business driven, life, family, everything. It’s just a lot of decisions you go through and everybody goes through those in life. Us racers are no different.”
For as hard as things have been on the Cup side, he also hasn’t had much luck behind the wheel of his teammates equipment either. Running select races in the Camping World Truck Series for KHI and the No. 2 it appears to be the only place that he’s having fun and where things have been going right.
Well, sort of. Bowyer still laughed when talking about it, however.
“Surprise wasn’t there,” said Bowyer about Harvick’s announcement of shutting the truck team down. “But I’m bummed out, man. That No. 2 truck, I’m having a lot of fun in that thing this year! Again, it just kind of shows you the way my year is going. You can have a dominant truck, as dominant as we were last Friday night in Atlanta and we still lost. I’m just telling you; it’s just not my year. I’m ready to start over!”
