Bowyer has promising future in booth
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If Clint Bowyer could have scripted his sendoff, it most certainly would have been a proper blowout for the popular NASCAR driver who knows how to party like no other.
Bowyer would have had fans and friends with him as he celebrated every week all along the Cup Series circuit. He certainly would not have chosen this year as his last, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced racing to shut down for weeks, then reduced the capacity for fans at the track when NASCAR returned, preventing raucous revelers from roaming the infield.
Bowyer is one of many caught in the circumstances of the pandemic and pushed to make major career decisions. In his case: Hang around for another season driving race cars, or make a jump to the television booth?
Although he turned 41 in May, Bowyer didn’t want 2020 to be his last season. Then an offer to join Fox Sports made for an easy split for Bowyer and Stewart-Haas Racing.
“I think you always, everybody in life, wants to just get by with one more year. One more year, one more lap,” Bowyer said. “It’s 2020, right? Is it the perfect time to do all of this? I don’t think 2020 is the perfect time for anything.
“This opportunity came up. It was an opportunity of a lifetime, an opportunity to stay a part of this sport for many years to come.”
Bowyer could have pushed for a return to the No. 14 Ford next season if enough sponsors agreed to back another year. But SHR really needed the veteran who was the Cup Series runner-up in the 2012 season with Michael Waltrip Racing to free his seat so the team could give 25-year-old Chase Briscoe a much-earned promotion from the second-tier Xfinity Series.
The offer from Fox Sports, where Bowyer had been moonlighting as a guest analyst, ended any other scenarios. Taking the TV deal gave Bowyer a second career.
“Were we working on what’s next as far as being in a race car? Absolutely,” Bowyer said. “Once that (Fox) opportunity came to the table, it was pretty clear that that’s what I needed to do.”
After 15 full seasons at NASCAR’s top level, Bowyer will get out of the car next month. He will leave the sport a winner for Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota, a former Xfinity Series champion, a kid from Kansas who made it to the big leagues.
He announced his plans earlier this month with enough time to prepare for a sendoff today at Kansas Speedway. He grew up in Emporia, just more than an hour away from the track, and he was a fan drinking beer atop an infield motorhome when Jeff
Gordon won the first Cup Series race at Kansas in 2001.
Bowyer spent two months working with Gordon, the fourtime Cup Series champion whose last full season was in 2015, during the on-track shutdown as an analyst-slash-participant in the iRacing broadcast coverage. Next year they will be full-time teammates in the television booth.
“I was getting ready. I was getting close to being ready,” Bowyer said of retirement. “Was I ready after this pandemic and this COVID year of no fans and a weird way to go out? No. But was I looking for that what’s next moment or opportunity? That answer is absolutely yes. This pandemic led to that opportunity
to get in the studio.”
Fox Sports used just Mike Joy and Gordon in a two-person booth this year after Darrell Waltrip’s retirement. The list of probable talent was deep and ranged from retiring Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Chad Knaus to current title contender Kevin Harvick, who has proved to be an outstanding guest analyst.
The pandemic gave Bowyer weekly studio time, and his large and loud personality was full throttle during the virtual racing telecasts. He’s good natured and gregarious, a version of Waltrip with the huckster, fan-appreciated style.
Just like Waltrip did for nearly two decades, Bowyer can now look toward a long future in NASCAR’s spotlight.
“I love being a part of this sport. I mean, that was so important for me. I didn’t want to just retire,” Bowyer said. “If this opportunity with Fox didn’t come to the table, I was going to be in a car somewhere somehow. I wasn’t going to just quit and run off into the sunset, because I like this sport and I wanted to find my way and a future within it.”
Home stretch
Not much changed from the regular season through the first two rounds of the Cup Series playoffs: Harvick and Denny Hamlin are still favored to race for the championship, and it’s a crapshoot regarding who the other two title-eligible drivers will be for the Nov. 8 finale at Phoenix Raceway.
Harvick, Hamlin and the other six drivers still in the playoff field — Brad Keselowski, Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, Martin Truex Jr., Alex Bowman and Kurt Busch — have three races to make sure they’re racing for a title in the desert next month. After today at Kansas, the series heads to Texas Motor Speedway and then Martinsville Speedway in Virginia.
Stewart-Haas Racing’s Harvick and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Hamlin have combined for 16 wins in 32 races this season and have hoarded enough points that it would likely take some sort of sudden collapse to keep them from being in contention on the final day.
Harvick, the points leader, had a mediocre second round but doesn’t seem too concerned about these next three races, saying he considers the tracks “right up our alley, especially the first two.”
If Hamlin wins for the third straight time at Kansas, it could give his crew more time to prepare for a title fight as he seeks his first championship.
“We could go the next two weeks and really shift our focus from Texas and Martinsville to putting all of our resources towards Phoenix,” Hamlin said. “That would certainly be a benefit for whoever locks in right off the bat.”