KANSAS CITY – Michael Waltrip Racing’s Clint Bowyer doesn’t shy away from speaking the truth or mincing words, especially when it comes to his on-track performance.
That persona continued Friday morning at Bowyer’s hometown track of Kansas Speedway. And while the 36-year old was critical of his team’s start to the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, Bowyer did offer some positive vibe that there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel.
“Anytime you’re in any kind of competition you’re trying to better yourself until you’re the best, and then you’re still trying to better yourself. We know we’re behind so this is definitely the area we’ve been working on,” said Bowyer. “We’ve been working very hard in the wind tunnel trying to find some aero advantages, some gains that we feel like we’re behind on the aero side. The engine guys have been working hard on trying to make some gains under the hood as well because we know we’re behind there, too.”
Returning to his hometown track of Kansas Speedway, Bowyer looks to add just his second top-10 finish of the season to his resume, after finishing ninth two weeks ago at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway.
And if Friday’s practice speeds was any indication, Bowyer and the No. 15 5-Hour Energy Toyota Camry, their chances are as good as any.
12th fastest in the first practice session for the SpongeBob SquarePants 400 followed by bolting out the fastest lap during the opening stages of final practice before landing eighth, Bowyer looks for an monstrous win at his hometown track.
The speed from the MWR camp at Kansas is a nice change of pace. Especially when Bowyer canted Friday morning how much further behind they were compared to everyone else, especially during the west coast swing in March.
Bowyer called the west coast trip a horrible decision for the schedule and “three weeks of hell.” With most teams needed to be prepared a month in advance, discovering you’re farther off than
your competition quickly left Bowyer and the entire MWR wondering how to get caught up.
Often, Bowyer took his frustration out on the radio – even joking with reporters “he couldn’t yell any louder” about the car’s performance.
“You’ve got what you got,” explained Bowyer. ”That’s a month and then you get back and it takes a month to get sorted out what direction because obviously you’ve been down a path, you’re headed down that direction 100 percent with full speed ahead and all of the sudden you have to pull the reins back and change direction, figure out what direction to go and head down that direction and that’s another month.
“Now we’re two months into this thing and just now starting to see this next path and that west coast swing, three races right there right off the bat was a big part of that. You can’t blame anything, we should have been ready and we thought we were ready, but unfortunately we weren’t.”
This weekend, David Ragan joins MWR this weekend for the remainder of the season in the No. 55 Toyota, vacated by Brian Vickers for health issues. Bowyer is optimistic that the 29-year old can bring additional feedback and suggestions after just leaving the Joe Gibbs Racing camp.
“It will be interesting to see after he’s been in a Gibbs car what he feels in our cars and maybe where we’re better and where we’re not as good,” Bowyer said. “Right now, when we know we’ve been behind, and we’re really working had to try and better ourselves and figure this all out.”
Last weekend at Talladega, the new teammates took time to communicate at drivers introductions and bounce ideas off one another all in the interest of persevering the on-track performance of Michael Waltrip Racing.
““That’s (Ragan) a good asset to have, somebody that’s been in pretty damn equipment, with kind of the same horsepower under the hood,” Bowyer added. “So the feel is all going to be aero; it’s going to be chassis and stuff like that. I’m looking forward to hearing his input after the first practice.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
