By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Clint Bowyer’s first Bristol Motor Speedway win slipped through his fingers when he pounded the wall with 67 laps to go in Sunday’s Food City 500.
What caused the Stewart-Haas Racing driver to see the fence was slight contact between himself and Joey Logano as they fought for position near the front. After hitting the wall and bringing out the caution, Bowyer still managed seventh place at the line.
“[Logano] was racing me pretty hard,” Bowyer said. “I could get under him — my strong suit was the bottom. He was diamonding it and just didn’t leave me much room.”
Bowyer had no hard feelings toward Logano after the contact.
“It’s time to race there’s no question about it,” he said. “We just barely touched and it must’ve cut the valve stem out of it. Hit it just right.”
Leading 24 laps, Bowyer was one of the consistent front-runners who traded the top spot throuhgout the competitive event. For Bowyer, however, it was same song, second verse at Bristol.
“Typical luck for here. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” he said. “We put ourselves in position, our Stewart-Haas Ford was good. Damn, I wanted to get that thing in Victory Lane, such a good looking car.”
Despite the fast car, the field still lost out on either Joe Gibbs Racing or Team Penske, who have won all eight of the season’s races. Bowyer feels the half-mile is incomparable in terms of a competitive gauge.
“It’s a different beast, a different short track,” he said. “Those Penske cars have more speed. You see that on restarts. My strong suit like last week was long runs. We slowly kept picked them away. I couldn’t take off worth a damn but I could really come on strong at the end of a run.
The day was still an uptick for the No. 14 team.
“You always take positives out of a day like this,” he said. “I was having a good time. Our race was relatively good but… I don’t know. A bad deal at the end.”