Race 2 Win: Sprint Cup Series Race Notes

Sprint Cup Series

Goody’s Cool Orange 500 - Clint Bowyer Notes

Clint Bowyer
No. 07 BB&T Chevrolet Impala SS
Event Preview Fact Sheet

Event/Date: Goody’s Cool Orange 500 – March 30, 2008
Venue: Martinsville Speedway – Martinsville, Va.

NOTES:

This Week’s BB&T Chevrolet at Martinsville Speedway … Clint Bowyer will pilot Chassis No. 218 from the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) stable. Built new last season but yet to be raced, this is the same Chevrolet Impala SS Bowyer and his Gil Martin-led team tested last week at Greenville-Pickens (S.C.). Speedway.

From Black to Burgundy … This week, Bowyer’s No. 2 Chevy Impala SS will feature a burgundy, gold and white BB&T paint scheme. Jack Daniel’s, Bowyer’s mainstay primary sponsor, will be featured on the car’s lower-rear quarter panels and deck lid. BB&T is the full-time sponsor of Bowyer’s No. 2 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. BB&T Corporation, headquartered in Winston-Salem, N.C., is a fast growing, highly profitable financial holding company. Its bank subsidiaries operate more than 1,500 financial centers in the Carolinas, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Maryland, Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Indiana and Washington, D.C. Building on a tradition of excellence in community banking that stretches back to 1872, BB&T continues to offer clients a complete range of financial services including banking, lending, insurance, trust, wealth management and capital markets solutions. BB&T’s operating strategy distinguishes it from other financial holding companies. BB&T’s banking subsidiaries are organized as a group of community banks, each with a regional president, which allows decisions to be made locally, close to the client. This also makes BB&T’s client service more responsive, reliable and empathetic.

Thinking About Phil … Condolences go out to Phil Gould, Car Chief of RCR’s No. 07 Chevy, and his family on the unexpected passing of his mother Hazel Gould. Gould will miss this weekend’s race at Martinsville but is expected to return to the track next weekend in Texas.

Martinsville Minutes … In four starts at Martinsville’s .526-mile oval, Bowyer has a ninth-place finish to call a career-best. Over those four races, the third-year Sprint Cup wheelman has logged an underwhelming 30.3 average starting position but has bounced back nicely in race trim with a 16.3 finishing average. He has completed all but four of the 2,006 laps contested over that span and has earned an even $333,000.

Loop Data Highlights …

Laps Led … According to NASCAR’s Loop Data Statistics, Bowyer is fourth in the Laps Led category after spending 139 laps (8.9 percent) atop the leader board.

Laps in the Top 15 … At the same time, the 2007 championship contender has spent 1,035 of the 1,548 laps run this season (66.9 percent) mixing it up in the top 15. Average Running Position … Bowyer is ranked 11th in the Average Running Position category. His average position over the NSCS first five races is 14.959. That statistic is derived from the sum of his position on each lap divided by the number of laps run in each race.

Driver Rating … Meanwhile, the 28-year-old driver is ranked 12th in the Driver Rating category amongst the 41 drivers to start all five races this season with an 88.2 Driver Rating. 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.

Bowyer Breaks Through … With his third-place showing two weekend’s ago at Bristol, Bowyer moved into ninth in the Sprint Cup Series point standings giving team owner Richard Childress three cars in the top 10. Bowyer’s RCR teammates Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton are third and fourth in points, respectively.

Climbing the Charts … After finishing no better than 19th in the season’s first three races, Bowyer and RCR’s No. 07 team have picked up the pace in convincing style. With his sixth-place finish in Atlanta and a top-three effort two weeks ago at Bristol, Bowyer climbed from 23rd to ninth in the NSCS championship point standings in just two races – a net gain of 14 positions.

RCR at Martinsville … In 100 previous NASCAR Sprint Cup starts at Martinsville, RCR has earned three poles and posted six wins between former drivers Ricky Rudd and Dale Earnhardt. Additionally, RCR has earned 22 top-five and 39 top-10 finishes at Martinsville dating back to April 10, 1972. Childress, a former driver in NASCAR’s top division, contributed four of those top 10s from 1976-1978.

Keep on Rolling … Bowyer has been running at the end of every race dating back to Phoenix in November 2006, a streak of 42 races. The only other driver running at the end of more consecutive races is Harvick who owns a streak of 49 events without a did not finish (DNF).

CB at the SPEED Stage … Bowyer will be a guest on this week’s installment of NASCAR Trackside. NASCAR Trackside will shoot this week’s show live from the SPEED Stage Friday, March 28 from 7-8 p.m. local time. The SPEED Stage will be located in the Martinsville Speedway display area outside turn four.

Nationwide News … While the majority of his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series counterparts took last weekend off, Bowyer raced his No. 2 BB&T Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS to a second-place finish in the Pepsi 300 at Nashville Superspeedway. The runner-up finish propelled Bowyer to the top spot in the NASCAR Nationwide Series championship point standings. The Emporia, Kan., native leads Carl Edwards by 11 points heading into the division’s off-weekend before next week’s race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Up to Speed … FOX’s live coverage of the Goody’s Cool Orange 500 from Martinsville Speedway will take the green flag Sunday, March 30 beginning at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). The race will broadcast live on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the sixth of 36 races on the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule will be televised live on SPEED Friday, March 28 beginning at 3:30 p.m. EDT. MRN and Sirius Satellite Radio will provide live qualifying updates.

CLINT BOWYER QUOTES
On the surface, it looks like you struggled to get going at Martinsville early in your Sprint Cup career but your recent results make it look like you’ve gotten a lot more comfortable on the track. Is Martinsville a race you look forward to?
“I enjoy going to Martinsville and it definitely helps that it’s close to home. For me, it’s almost as close as going to Charlotte. It’s a fun track. Martinsville is definitely a place where I’ve had to improve a lot and had to learn how to get around the race track but I feel like I’m inching up on it. We’ve made gains with some brake stuff over the winter that should go a long way towards a good run.”

It seems like Martinsville is one of those places that just about everyone coming up through the series struggles with. Why do you think that is?
“It’s so different than anything most guys have ever run on. You have to do a lot of things that don’t come naturally to a race car driver. You have to back the corner up and let the car roll through the turns. Martinsville is all things that demand patience and, as race drivers, patience is something we’re usually lacking. It makes you feel like you can do it, and you can. You can get away with picking the gas up too early or driving it in the corner too deep but that’s the one track, more than anywhere, that it hurts you more than it helps you.”

Everything at Martinsville is tight. The garage is tight. Pit road is tight. The race track is tight. Do you ever feel claustrophobic?
“You’re just never out of the storm at Martinsville. Even if you’re leading, you’re only going to be in clean air for about 10 laps and then you’re in traffic. There’s always something going on. It’s tight in the garage area and on pit road. You gotta be on your game from the time you come through the tunnel until you leave.”

This is BB&T’s first race as a primary sponsor for a Cup race. Talk about how that program has grown in just over a year.
“It’s been a lot of fun to have BB&T for a sponsor. I take a lot of personal satisfaction in terms of how that program has grown. They were brand new to this last season at Daytona and to see the how BB&T has built this program, basically from the ground up, has been really cool and a lot of fun to be part of. They’ve gone from a part-time Nationwide sponsorship last season to a full program this year and picked up two Cup races. I’ve developed a great working relationship with the bank. BB&T manages a lot of my finances and I’ve become very good friends with some of the executives. When you become personally invested with a sponsor, it really makes you proud to fly that flag so I’m excited to carry the BB&T colors this weekend in Martinsville.”