Clint Bower delivered on Sunday with another strong result in the Kobalt Tools 500. (Photo: Geoff Burke/Getty Images)
Clint Bowyer would have made a good cowboy, the strong, silent kind of guy who does the right thing without being flashy about it. Kind of like Western movie star Gary Cooper, way back in the day.
Bowyer doesn’t dazzle like Kyle Busch and he isn’t a lightning rod for controversy like Tony Stewart or even a skilled garage politician like his Richard Childress Racing teammate Jeff Burton. All Bowyer does is get results.
In 2007, only his second full season in the Sprint Cup Series, Bowyer shocked the racing community by finishing third in points. Last year, he was a solid fifth and on top of that won the NASCAR Nationwide Series championship for good measure.
Bowyer is showing no signs of letting up this year, either. Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the Emporia, Kansas, native finished a solid sixth, maintaining second place in points, just 43 markers behind series leader Jeff Gordon. In four races this season, Bowyer has two top-five finishes, including a best of second at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, three top 10s and no finishes outside the top 20. It’s been another strong, if kind of silent, run for Bowyer, doubly impressive when you consider that he’s in the fourth RCR car, a new team for 2009.
Not that Bowyer would be the kind of guy to make a big deal out of that, although he was understandably somewhat chafed that a lot of pre-season prognostications didn’t figure Bowyer and his new team to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup again.
Instead of raising a ruckus about that, though, Bowyer and new crew chief Shane Wilson have used it as motivation to help jump start the 2009 campaign.
