April 25, 2024

Clint Bowyer navigating rough bridge season to Stewart-Haas

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Clint Bowyer will be a busy man this weekend at Kansas Speedway.

He’ll start off by jumping into a truck for the first time in a couple years on Friday night, a one-off ride with GMS Racing.

Then he’ll slip into his regular ride with HScott Motorsports in the Sprint Cup race on Saturday before giving fans who purchased a car from his dealership ride-alongs on Sunday.

In other words, Bowyer will be too busy to ruminate on how rocky this season has been.

In what was supposed to be a bridge year between the folding of Michael Waltrip Racing and taking over Tony Stewart’s ride next year, Bowyer has twice blown up at his team on the radio, labored to get his No. 15 car anywhere near contention and even brought his own considerable ability into question.

“I think everybody knows me, whether I’m frustrated or happy or whatever, that ventilation — whether it’s a celebratory ventilation or a pissed off — the wick is pretty short. It burns out in about 5 minutes,” Bowyer said Thursday.

“The next thing out of my mouth is, ‘All right, what are we going to do to fix it?’

“I don’t really care about yesterday or what happened in a practice or race, this sport is all about what are you going to do tomorrow?” he said. “That’s what you have to instill in yourself.”

Bowyer is accustomed to being in the best equipment, whether it was the past few years with Waltrip or his early years with Richard Childress Racing.

And Bowyer knew there would be plenty of growing pains when he joined up with Harry Scott’s smaller operation for this season.

He admits now that he wasn’t quite prepared for the enormity of the challenge.

“When you’re down, most of the time there’s a reason you’re down, especially when you’re as far down as we are down,” Bowyer said. “(But) we’ve got some good things coming that I’m excited about.”

It’s not as if this season has been a total throwaway. He finished eighth a few weeks ago at Bristol, and last week survived the wrecked-filled race at Talladega to finish seventh.

It’s just that in between was a 33rd at Richmond, when Bowyer exploded at his ill-prepared team in a profanity-laced tirade.

And before that lousy runs at Daytona, Atlanta and elsewhere.