Around the Track: Lowe's Motor Speedway

Nextel Cup rookie Clint Bowyer was unable to recover from a pit road mistake two weeks ago at Darlington Raceway that left him 23rd in the race and 15th in points.

His luck wasn't much better in last week's Nextel Open, the preliminary to the Nextel All-Star Challenge, as he finished a distant 13th.

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Now Bowyer prepares for the longest race of the season, the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. This wasn't one of Bowyer's best tracks in the Busch Series with two 33rds and a 32nd in three appearances.

But a solid test session three weeks ago in which he posted one of the fastest speeds gives him hope of turning that around.

In Jack Daniel's "Around the Track,'' Bowyer addresses each week's venue as well as his philosophies on racing and life in general around NASCAR.

Six-hundred miles is a long time to be in a car.

I remember last year going over to my buddy Ron Hornaday's lake house the day of the race. We watched the start, went out skiing, came back in, ate some dinner, swam in the pool, hung out for a while, went back in and the race wasn't even midway.

We went back on the boat, hung out for a while and came back in time to watch the end.

I'm thinking, "Man, this must be killing these guys.'' Now I'm one of them.

You kind of have to manage your game with the new surface and have your car freed up to be good on long runs. There's only once place to relax -- the straightaways. You'd better catch your breath then and figure out what you're going to do on the next corner.

It's a demanding racetrack. The guys that can stay on top of their game the longest are the guys that will prevail.

The hard tire on the new surface is going to make it dicey. I hope nobody bump drafts me. It'll get exciting if there's bump drafting.

The key is being there at the end. If you're on the lead lap after 600 miles you're going to be close to the top 10.

	Credit: Autostock
	Clint Bowyer 2006 Nextel Cup stats Track St. Fin. Laps Status Daytona 37 6 203 running Fontana 32 14 251 running Las Vegas 20 15 270 running Atlanta 16 27 324 running Bristol 27 29 495 running Martinsville 42 22 496 running Texas 12 19 333 running Phoenix 8 5 312 running Talladega 15 40 16 crash Richmond 20 10 400 running Darlington 3 23 365 running

We should be in good shape. We've got a really good car that tested really well. We had one of the fastest times in the last test, so we know we've got a really good package and good body on the car.

The main thing we've got to deal with is the hard tire. It puts you kind of up on top of the track and doesn't give you that hold-to-the-track feel. You feel like you're just skating around, so times are slower and you've got to be a little more cautious.

It threw everybody for a loop when they first got on it. Everybody had to make some pretty significant changes to the handling of their setups. I hope we're on top of that.

The track itself is comfortable, but it can bust out from underneath you at any time. The cars can slide away from you before you get the chance to catch up with it.

But I'd rather have it sliding around than tires blowing like they did last year [when there were a NASCAR-record 22 cautions]. Goodyear probably went a little bit overboard with the tires, but I don't blame them a bit. They got bit pretty bad and got some bad exposure and the heat put on them.

I should be well-rested after my trip to the Bahamas. Judging by the size of the yacht parked down there, I'm proud to say that NASCAR is looking pretty good amongst the rest of the companies of the world.

It was a good time to get away after Darlington. We had a good car, obviously, qualifying third. We just had one mistake in the pits where a tire got away.

It's a shame. They had so many good stops, and then there's one bad stop that really cost us track position that we never overcame.

But we're a team. You win and lose together. I'm not perfect. I've had my share of mistakes on the track. You've just got to bounce back.

It felt good to get back in the car in the Nextel Open and sweat some of that vacation out of me. Now I've got to get ready for 600 miles.