Bowyer on racing under pressure: 'You have to make it fun'

Clint Bowyer has a funny story to share.

"Well, you might not think it's funny, but I think it's hilarious," Bowyer said.

Eight NASCAR fans leaned in around a dinner table.

"So we go to this NASCAR Fan Engagement Center — whatever the hell that means — and they have all these feeds and charts and graphs showing what people are tweeting," he said. "And I mean, these screens are going crazy with the graphs!

"I go, 'Well, how do I get on there?' They said, 'Well, if someone says something major on Twitter, it'll show up here.' I said, 'Can I move the graph right now?' They said, 'No, it has to be really big.'"

Bowyer, the expert storyteller, paused for dramatic effect and grinned.

"So I said, 'I'm pretty sure my house is going to burn down, but …,' and I tweeted: 'Dale Earnhardt Jr. sucks!' "

The table erupted in laughter, led by Bowyer. His fiancée, Lorra Podsiadlo, chuckled and shook her head knowingly.

"Dale Jr. caught wind of it and texted me, 'You crazy bastard, what are you thinking? They're going to kill you!' " Bowyer said.

So did the charts move at NASCAR's epicenter, where the sport monitors fan reactions on social media? Did Bowyer get any angry replies?

No answers were available. Bowyer, the poster boy for short attention spans, had moved on to the next topic.

Five months after Bowyer's suspicious spin at Richmond International Raceway triggered one of NASCAR's biggest scandals, the driver and his team are ready to talk about something else.

But is the rest of the NASCAR community willing to forgive and forget?

Judging by the fans Bowyer charmed during a recent dinner at the NASCAR Hall of Fame — theyhad purchased a package to eat with a mystery Sprint Cup Series driver before the Hall's induction ceremony — the answer was yes.

That group might not represent the majority, though.

Bowyer, 34, had earned a reputation as NASCAR's most freewheeling, fun-loving driver. If you had asked any driver who the life of the party was, they'd all have said Bowyer. His enthusiasm for racing was contagious.

That all changed Sept. 7 with a two-word command and a controversial spin.

With seven laps to go at Richmond — in the Chase for the Sprint Cup cutoff race — Bowyer was told over the team radio channel that Ryan Newman was leading the race. That meant Bowyer's Michael Waltrip Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. would be out of the title run. Only a caution flag that might shuffle the field would give Truex a chance.

Crew chief Brian Pattie asked Bowyer — who had contracted poison oak — if his arm was starting to hurt. "Itch it," he told Bowyer.

Moments later, Bowyer spun out. He has never publicly said it was purposeful, but the timing and radio chatter have led others in the garage to draw that conclusion.

Bowyer and teammate Brian Vickers later pitted unnecessarily to give up positions on the track, which ultimately put Truex in the Chase. But NASCAR responded two days later with the largest penalty in the sport's history, removing Truex from the Chase and installing Newman.

Among the penalties were a $300,000 team fine, a 50-point penalty that removed Truex from the Chase and an indefinite suspension for general manager Ty Norris that was lifted only recently.

The fallout had only begun.

Six days later, NASCAR chairman Brian France made an unprecedented move on the eve of the Chase's 10th anniversary, adding Jeff Gordon as the 13th driver in a 12-man field.

Sponsor NAPA Auto Parts left MWR after the season, which forced Truex's team to shut down. MWR contracted from three cars to two and reduced its workforce by 15% to 220 people, according to co-owner Rob Kauffman.

Fans questioned NASCAR's credibility, and Bowyer's reputation took a blow.

Not as fun as before

It's no wonder, then, that Bowyer told his dinner group he wished he raced in a simpler time.

"Look, it's not fun anymore once you get to this level," he said. "That's sad to say, but there are a lot of lives on the line and jobs at stake. It's a serious job. You're competing for your sponsor and hundreds of employees back at the shop.

"Especially when you get down to the Chase and all the money is on the line ... ."

His voice trailed off. When he started racing on a local level, it was nothing but joy. Now, he said, "You have to make it fun."

A woman from Florida asked Bowyer how he made it to NASCAR's top level. "Luck," he said, then burst into laughter.

He continued by telling the woman how he grew up racing motocross with his brothers. At 16, he got a job in a Goodyear store in Emporia, Kan., his hometown. His boss raced an old Monte Carlo at the local dirt track; Bowyer started tagging along and eventually started driving.

"It was good racing, a big party and a hell of a fight!" Bowyer said. "Heck, it was all three of those things the very first time I raced. It was awesome!"

Bowyer's first race car was a 1981 Chevrolet Chevette, a car that had been impounded at his dad's tow lot and was never claimed. He and his mother took it to the racetrack with the radio still in the dashboard.

It turned out the car's battery wasn't properly secured. So he went to Walmart, bought a plastic marine box with a nylon strap and concealed the battery in the passenger side floorboard.

"But during the race, I get in a crash, and I'm barrel-rolling, flipping down the track," Bowyer said. "Something kept hitting me, and I couldn't figure out what it was. Well, it was the battery. It kept slipping out and hitting me in the helmet. Finally, I end up holding the battery away from my head.

"So the crash is over, and the safety workers came up to the window and said, 'You OK?' I said, 'Yeah, but get this damn battery away from me!' "

Nobody's perfect

That kind of spirit is why drivers such as Tony Stewart — whose team was initially victimized by Bowyer's spin — are willing to forgive. Stewart called Bowyer a friend and said his view of the driver hadn't changed despite what happened at Richmond.

"I think of him the same," Stewart said. "He's still the same personality; he's still the same guy you see every week. I think if he had time to sit there and make that decision, he wouldn't have chosen to do what he did. But that was ordered to him.

"I don't think it's fair to judge his personality off that one day and that one instance. His personality has been consistent from Day 1 since he got here. ... It wasn't all his doing and his decision."

Newman, now at Richard Childress Racing, said Bowyer would always have Richmond hanging over his head.

"You can't just take that away," he said. "It's a part of history."

But in the same breath, Newman said everyone made mistakes.

"I can't say I was fine with it, that I was fine with Clint admitting the mistake or what occurred," he said. "But I'm past it. People are people. They make mistakes. Sometimes you have to forgive and forget. But in the end, it's still on the record books."

Bowyer doesn't like to talk about Richmond. He rarely acknowledges the incident. When reporters during NASCAR's preseason media tour in January and a subsequent media day in Daytona Beach, Fla., tried to get comments, Bowyer deflected the questions with humor or forward-looking statements.

Fox Sports analyst Kyle Petty said of Bowyer, "(He has done) a really, really good job at not bringing it back up or getting into the middle of it when we in the media ask questions about it."

Time will soften the glare of the scandal, Petty said, as it does with all such events in a largely forgiving society.

"I don't believe that's going to be something that hangs over him his entire career, because he has such a presence and such a personality that you forget that after a while," he said. "I think it will take time, and people will continue to bring it up for a number of years. But at the same time, I think that's behind him and he's moved on to something else."

For team owner Michael Waltrip, what happened at Richmond is like any mistake. The entire organization can learn from them, and that includes Bowyer.

"It's kind of like how Michael Jordan missed more shots than he ever made," Waltrip said. "You just focus forward and try to use it as motivation to be the best you can possibly be."