CLINT BOWYER, No. 15 Pink Lemonade 5-hour ENERGY benefitting LBBC Toyota Camry, Michael Waltrip Racing
What has it been like to become a father?
“First of all, just so happy and proud. What a wild experience — all your friends and family, peers and everybody is trying to warn you and tell you that it’s going to change your life. You’re like, ‘There’s no way.’ Then all of the sudden that little gremlin comes out of there and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is real.’ I was probably not the norm as far as spectator in an event like that. In the room there I was high-fiving people and I was kind of pushing the doctor out of the way at one point because I was trying to get a better view of him coming into the world. Of course the nurses are trying to hold me back and they’re like, ‘You can’t get that close.’ I’m like, ‘Get the hell out of my way, here he comes.’
“It was a lot of fun. We were all laughing. An amazing experience. He’s running really good during the day — you think this is way too easy, this is no problem at all. Then his engine drastically takes a turn for the worst about the time you’re trying to go to sleep on that really comfortable couch over in the corner that’s about this wide and basically like sleeping right here on this tabletop, he starts really screaming very loud. The nurses tend to come in to do paperwork at 3:00 AM, which is really handy. They want to ask you about your education and things like that and you’re like, ‘Lady, can we wait until daylight maybe — that would be a good goal,’ — 3:00 AM is not a good time in the morning to be talking to me with him screaming, her pissed and now I am. It’s been a wild deal and Cash (Bowyer’s son) is awesome.”
What would it mean to win with this special paint scheme?
“It’s funny you said that, I always had mixed feelings about a pink race car. When I raced my first one, I think the 5-hour car our first year together three years ago was my first pink car and it always reminds me back when I first started racing in the Kansas City area Tim Kerrick, a buddy of mine that’s dominated in the Kansas City area and his family has for a long time always had a black and pink ‘Guitars and Cadillac’s’ sponsored No. 2 modified and he just flat wore them out. You have to be a bad man to drive a pink race car and he was. Hopefully, I don’t know if I quite cover the bad man category, but it sure feels right being able to represent such strong foundations and women all across the country just like Holly (Cain, NASCAR.com reporter) that are going through this. It just seems like as you get older or maybe it’s just me getting older and having more people acclimated to this, but it seems like the older I get the more you hear about people battling breast cancer. It’s definitely a serious problem in our country and it’s good to be a part of something that’s trying to help with the research.”
What has it been like watching this area develop around Kansas Speedway?
“As a kid watching Tim Kerrick in that pink ‘Guitars and Cadillac’s’ car that I was telling you about, I would drive by this place. This place was the bad part of town — Wyandotte County, the only good thing about Wyandotte County that I remember is the Dot, the barbeque joint down the way that had some of the best barbeque in the country that you hit on the way to Lakeside Speedway. To see what has become of this area and to watch the first race here, I remember being down in the infield on top of a motor home, I don’t remember who it was, but I was down watching the very first race here. Watched the shopping center being built, watching the baseball diamonds and now the soccer fields, the casino — all of this area has really become one of the best places to be in Kansas City and it all hubs around this race track. That’s the impact this speedway did for this community.
“Kansas City is a blast. It’s fun for everybody in the garage area, the food is great and obviously I’m partial to it, but it’s fun because you hear your peers, you hear the crew members — everybody enjoys coming here because there’s so much to do. Look at the storyline that Kansas City has had this week — if somehow a Kansas City driver could win this race that would be unbelievable. With the Chiefs winning on Monday night — they pulled (Tom) Brady out of the game it was so bad. The Royals — I was so pissed because I was watching the Royals and I was bummed out, I’ve got this kid coming and she’s (Lorra Bowyer, wife) getting tired and I’m tired he’s being a little grouchy and isn’t ready to come out yet so I’m like, ‘Well damn, I think the Royals are done.’ I shut the TV off and we get up at like 4:00 AM and everything is going crazy and I don’t even know why, but I glance up at the TV and the news is going on and the Royals won. I’m like, ‘Honey, you ain’t going to believe this, but the Royals won.’ Now we’re arguing about the Royals winning and they’re carting her out the door and I’m like, this is crazy. That’s just what the Kansas City area does and being a fans of sports, what a week they’ve had right here in Kansas City.”
Why did you choose the name Cash for your son?
“Probably for all the cash that he’s going to cost me over the years when he gets to racing cars or something. I’m going to try to put a guitar in his hand because I always laugh at Blake (Shelton), I’m like, ‘Just because you breathe a little bit better than I do and you can hold a guitar you get paid to go all across the country and you don’t really do much, you just breathe a little bit better.’ Then these golfers, I don’t even think they carry their clubs, they just walk around and swing a club every now and then and make a hell of a good living. I’m thinking we’re going to try one of them two first and if that doesn’t work then he’ll probably be over here battling out all my peers. It will be fun to watch how this all unravels because a lot of us racers right now have kids pretty well within a five year radius of all this. We’re going to be back battling each other probably for the rest of our lives. Really the great competition comes down, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a t-ball game or a soccer game with the parents, that’s when it gets out of control. I can just see us yelling and screaming at each other and still fighting when we’re 60 or 70 years old and our kids are racing, just like our dads did.”
