Clint Bowyer last won a race nearly five years ago and his career slowly started to dip until he hit rock bottom last season. Now he’s back to posting competitive numbers and looks to end his long winless drought.
Bowyer entered the 2017 season coming off the worst season of his career and as the driver taking over the car formerly occupied by Tony Stewart. Despite his lackluster 2016 campaign, expectations were much higher for the driver who hadn’t won a race since October 13, 2012, at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
His season started with a 32nd-place finish after being caught up in a wreck near the start of the final stage of the Daytona 500. He followed that performance up a week later with an 11th-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
He earned his first top-10 finish of the season with a 10th-place run at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the highlight of a rotten race for Stewart-Haas Racing. Bowyer earned his first top-five since Bristol in August of 2015 with a third at Auto Club Speedway.
He matched his top-10 total from 2016 with a seventh at Martinsville Speedway, the sixth race of the season. His second-place effort at Bristol Motor Speedway was his first runner-up finish since Homestead of 2012.
Finishes of 15th at Richmond International Raceway and 14th at Talladega Superspeedway, including 10 laps led (233.33 percent more than his 2016 total of three), puts him ninth in the points entering Kansas Speedway.
Statistically, Bowyer has already bested his totals from 2016 and is on track to post season totals comparable to his career high of 2012 and 2013. But there’s still the 159-race winless drought that he admits does gnaw at him, but says he doesn’t think about it.
“It is but, to be honest with you, you don’t even think about that,” Bowyer said. “You think about winning. I never think about how long it has been. I think about how you are going to get it done. You have that thought process through the week as you are going through competition meetings starting Monday and your conversations with the crew chief all week long. The biggest thing is you are lined back up with an organization that is capable of doing that. That is item number one. You are with a manufacturer that is capable of doing that and is winning races and competing at the highest level. Each and every week you go to the race track knowing you have a chance to win the race. All the past that has happened is the furthest thing from my mind because you are back to sitting in equipment capable of winning these races and competing at the highest level.”
