Around the Track: RIR

Nextel Cup rookie Clint Bowyer rebounded from consecutive finishes of 33rd or worse for a season-best third at California Speedway to move up two spots to 18th in the points standings.

Now he heads back to Richmond International Raceway, where he was 10th in May.

This is going to be an interesting race for those guys ranked sixth through 11th.

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If you're outside the top 10 like we are and racing somebody inside the top 10 you're going to have to be nice. You don't want to be the one that blows their chance to make the championship chase.

I'll help my teammates as much as I can. If they catch me I'll be getting out of their way. Our goal is to get Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick in the Chase.

It has nothing to do with team orders. There's nothing that needs to be said. Those guys have helped me out a lot this year, and if I can help them I'm gonna help as much as I can.

If that means get out of their way or whatever it takes, I'll do it.

Those who aren't my teammates ... it's a race and I'm there to race. Jeff and Kevin are the two I will let go. Other than that, when it comes time to go, I'll be racing for the best position I can.

But there'll come a time when it won't matter who's out there if I'm racing for the win. If we're in position to win, we're gonna win unless it means bumping my teammate out of the way.

If it's something little that's not going to hurt one of them as far as the Chase, I'm gonna do whatever I can do.

I want to win a race before the end of the year and get back inside the top 15. That's our first goal.

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The second is to build for the rest of the year so we can start at Daytona swinging like we did this year but be able to keep that momentum and be a championship caliber team.

We could be a 12th- to 13th-place car week in and week out if we just quit making mistakes.

With a little luck we still could be in contention for a spot in the top 10 pretty easily without a few elementary mistakes.

We've been able to run up front and lead laps. We've showed all the speed and talent. We just need to get the finishes.

Sitting on the front row at Indianapolis with Burton, that was big. So there have been a lot of things during these first 26 races to be proud of.

There have been a few low moments, too. The lowest was probably blowing that motor in Michigan with two laps left. We were running third and headed for at the time our best finish. That was a pretty bum deal.

What happened at Pocono where Tony Stewart wrecked us, that was totally out of our hands. That was in the hands of somebody else. I look at that as a stupid mistake by somebody else.

We're not really looking at these last races as a time to experiment. We've hit on a few things like body combinations that all three of us really like, and that's been proven by our success.

The key for us is continuing to get experience on these tracks and continue to grow as a team. It's like the features for an engine. When you have those pieces of an engine that are right and perfectly balanced out that engine runs a lot better.

Richmond is a good place to start building. I love that track. If I was building a new speedway and NASCAR would give me a date that would be the exact replica I'd build.

It's a perfect track. Turns 1 and 2 are quite a bit tighter than 3 and 4. One, you've got the curve of the front straightaway to enter so it's a big wide, sweeping turn entering and tight coming off.

Three, you're tight entering and you've got all that room off the corner.

It's just a lot of fun to race on. It's the perfect size. Aero doesn't matter all that much. You always see traffic and racing is good on the top and bottom.

And the place is fast.

We had a 10th-place car the last time, and I think we could have done better.

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.