Around the Track: Dover

Nextel Cup rookie Clint Bowyer finished 24th in last week's race at New Hampshire International Speedway after consecutive solid finishes to fall a spot to 17th in the points standings.

Now he heads to Dover International Speedway, where he finished 17th earlier this year during a streak of six consecutive finishes outside the top 10.

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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.

My very first car was an old AMC Concord that had belonged to my older brother, Andy.

I remember that I'd just gotten my learner's permit and we took the car out for a test run, kind of like my initiation. We always jumped the railroad tracks at home in Kansas, so when he told me to jump them I didn't hesitate.

We had air shocks in that old hot rod so we could really go for it. I got like three or four feet of air, but lo and behold when it landed it knocked the oil pan out and put a big hole in it.

My head hit the headliner we landed so hard and we bounced for at least 200 yards before we got it stopped.

The old man wasn't too happy when we came back. My first car only lasted about three hours.

It's funny, I've always been really fortunate not to tear up a lot of equipment growing up racing. Once I got here, like my first race, I wrecked.

I never felt so sick in my life. I know how much work goes into cars because I've built them. To drive a $200,000 racecar is a helluva opportunity. To destroy it in two laps wasn't good.

I had to learn to take care of cars on this level. I really hadn't had much experience on asphalt, definitely on big racetracks. It was a learning curve. Fortunately, Richard Childress was prepared to let me learn.

I grew up around cars with my dad's tow truck business and all of my friends always had hotrods. I grew up cleaning cars in dealerships for a job and always worked on my own stuff.

It doesn't necessarily take my mind off of what I'm doing at the track. You're always thinking ahead. It's just something I enjoy doing, and you don't have much time anymore to do what you enjoy.

I especially like old cars. I've got a 1929 Mercury that's always been my dream car. That's kind of my baby. It's pretty custom built with all the modifications into it.

It's black. If it ain't black, take it back I always say.

I also have a little 1929 pickup. I have a lot of fun driving it around. It's painted like it's been sitting in a field rusting away, weathered. That's kind of the new in thing. I can ride around in that without drawing attention to myself.

I really like muscle cars, a '69 Camaro or Z-28. It's a small block car, but it's still a muscle car. I've always wanted an old Hemi Roadrunner, too.

But for the most part I'm a Chevy guy and really love the old Chevy cars. The first car I owned after the AMC was a 1981 Chevy pickup. I built it myself with my father. It was a car that we impounded and the old boy never came back and got it.

I bought it for a hundred dollars and sold it for like $8,000, so that was a pretty good deal.

I was in the eighth grade when I got started on it. We stripped it down and repainted it and put an inline 6-cylinder engine in it. He told me I couldn't put a V-8 in it until the 6-cylinder blew up.

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Finally, the 6-cylinder blew up from driving it too hard so I got the V-8.

I hope I don't blow an engine this weekend at Dover. We ran really well in the first race, pretty much fifth behind Jeff Gordon almost the entire race. We got a bad set of tires at the end and ran super, super loose and fell back at the end.

We ran second in the Busch car, so we've got a good package for Dover. It's really high speed with high banks and a lot of fun to race on. It's kind of hard to pass. You've got to tip-toe around people because there's not a lot of room.

There's got to be a lot of give and take. The guys that race hard there usually end up in the wall.

I don't know if there are railroad tracks there to jump, and I don't know if I'd jump them if there were. I learned my lesson there.