Race 2 Win: NEXTEL Cup Series Race Notes

Nextel Cup Series

3M Performance 400 - Clint Bowyer Notes

Clint Bowyer
No. 07 Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet Impala SS
Event Preview Fact Sheet

Event/Date: 3M Performance 400 – August 19, 2007
Venue: Michigan International Speedway – Brooklyn, Mich.

This Week’s Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet at Michigan International Speedway … Clint Bowyer will pilot Chassis No. 156 from the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series stable. This is the same Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet Bowyer raced to a 16th-place finish in April at Texas Motor Speedway. Additionally, this car served as a backup at California in February, at Pocono in June and most recently at Chicagoland Speedway last month. Last year, Bowyer raced this car at Bristol in August (St. 27, Fn. 38) and at the NEXTEL Open (St. 19, Fn. 13). Built new at the end of 2005, this is the same Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet Dave Blaney raced in October 2005 at Kansas, Charlotte and Atlanta. Blaney also drove this car to a sixth-place finish in the 2005 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Bowyer in the Loop …

Not What You’d Expect … In three NEXTEL Cup starts at Michigan International Speedway (MIS), Bowyer has a 16.33 staring average coupled with a 29.33 finishing average. He has completed 482 of the 529 laps contested during those three races and has earned just over $237,000. However, those statistics don’t necessarily demonstrate how the Emporia, Kan., native performed at the two-mile speedway over those three starts. Last June, Bowyer was collected in a lap-23 incident, not of his own making, when Jeff Green and Tony Stewart got together in turn three, ultimately strapping the No. 07 team with a 39th-place finish. In August 2006, Bowyer was third with three laps to go when the engine let go scuttling an all but assured top-three effort. He struggled with a loose-handling machine in the division’s first stop at Michigan in June but still gouged his way to a 16th-place finish.
What a Difference a Year Makes … Over the season’s first 22 races, Bowyer has earned one pole, one top-five and 11 top-10 finishes. He has a 15.5 starting average and a 15.2 finishing average. The 28-year-old driver has completed 5,930 of 6,046 total laps contested (98.08 percent) and sits ninth in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series Championship point standings. Heading into round two at Michigan last season, Bowyer had a 21.7 average start, a 19.4 average finish and was 17th in points. He had two top fives and just six top 10s at this point last year.
Speaking of Stats … Bowyer is the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series fifth-best Closer – a statistic derived from the number of positions improved over the last 10 percent of each race. Bowyer has gained an average of 1.455 spots over the season’s first 22 races and has improved a total of 32 positions over the closing 10 percent of those same races. The Emporia, Kan., native has also logged 3,347 of the 6,046 laps completed this season (55.4 percent) running in the top 15. Bowyer is ranked 13th in NASCAR’s Average Running Position category (16.282) and is also 14th in the Driver Rating category (83.7). The Driver Rating is a formula that combines the following categories: wins, top-15 finishes, average running position while on the lead lap, average speed under green, fastest lap, most laps led and lead-lap finishes. The maximum a driver can earn in each race is 150 points. The Driver Rating number is used pre-race as a prediction tool and post-race as a performance evaluator.

Keep on Rolling … Bowyer has finished every race this season and has yet to record a DNF (did not finish) in 2007. He is only one of three drivers in the top 10 in points to have finished every race. His teammate Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin are the other two drivers with no DNFs.

RCR at Michigan … RCR team owner Richard Childress has earned two wins at Michigan International Speedway, both of them coming with Dale Earnhardt. Earnhardt snagged the checkered flag in the Miller American 400 on June 28, 1987 and again in the Miller Genuine Draft 400 on June 24, 1990. Additionally, RCR boasts 15 top-five and 33 top-10 finishes with seven different drivers including Childress, a former driver in NASCAR’s top division, who recorded top 10s at Michigan in June 1978 and in August 1979. RCR cars have also led a total of 615 laps at the two-mile oval located in the rolling Irish Hills and have earned just shy of $5 million in prize money.

Dicing on Dirt at Dave’s … On Tuesday, August 14, Bowyer will travel to Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio where he, along with Harvick, and fellow NEXTEL Cup drivers Dave Blaney and Tony Stewart will mix it up with local “e-mod” racers in a 25-lap, $1,000 to win A-Main. Blaney, the former driver of the No. 07 Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet, owns and operates the high-banked 3/8ths-mile dirt oval along with his father Lou and the rest of the Blaney family.

Back to Double Duty … After taking a four-race hiatus from Busch Series competition, Bowyer returns to the seat of the No. 2 BB&T Chevrolet for this weekend’s CARFAX 250. The 25th of 35 races on the 2007 NASCAR Busch Series agenda will take the green flag Saturday, August 18 at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). The race will be televised live on ESPN2 beginning at 3 p.m. EDT and broadcast from coast-to-coast on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius Satellite Radio. Qualifying will be televised live on SPEED the same day beginning at 11a.m. EDT.

Catch the Cup Race … Live coverage of the 3M Performance 400 will take the green flag Sunday, August 19 beginning at 1 p.m. EDT. The race will be televised live on ESPN and broadcast worldwide on MRN and Sirius Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the 23rd points-paying race on the 2007 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series will be televised live on SPEED Friday, August 17 at 3 p.m. EDT.

CLINT BOWYER QUOTES:
Talk about your run at Michigan in June and what you learned.
“I learned that I had a little too much confidence going into that race. In practice, I thought we had the car to beat and were going to be a force to be reckoned with but when they dropped the green flag we went backwards. I don’t think there was a car on the track that got passed more than we did that day. The difference between that day versus last year is that I would have overdriven the car and crashed and, as a team, we would have shorted out and been fighting all day. In June, we were able to keep our senses about us, stay under control and get at least a halfway decent finish out of it instead of being on the hook and finishing 40th.”

Obviously, Michigan is a big, wide and fast race track. It’s not that far of a stretch to see guys racing three, four and sometimes five-wide. What do you think about the style of racing that Michigan produces?
“I like any track where you can change your line and control your own destiny. It’s not a cookie-cutter race track where you’ve got what you got – the type of place where if your car is fast you’re fast and if not you’re in the back. At Michigan, you can maneuver around a little bit. If it’s not working on the bottom you can try the middle. If it’s not working in the middle, you can try the top. You can search around and there are places to pass. It’s not a place where you get up behind somebody and radio in that you’re aero-tight. If you’re aero-tight you drive underneath of them.”

Michigan has always been known as a fuel mileage race track. What do you think about fuel mileage races and how good are you at conserving fuel?
“This series is so competitive that it doesn’t really matter where you are, it’s going to come down to something like fuel mileage or tires. There are times when I wouldn’t want to be in the car but at the same time, I don’t think I’d want to be on the tool box making some of these calls either.”