| September 29, 2006
11:17 AM EDT (15:17 GMT)
Nextel Cup rookie Clint Bowyer finished eight in last week's race at Dover International Speedway to move up a spot to 16th in the point standings. Now he heads to Kansas Speedway, the home track for the Emporia, Kan., native. He will drive the same car he used for a career-best third-place finish last month at California and a fourth at Indianapolis in August.  | | |  | CLINT BOWYER | |
| JACK DANIEL'S ... | • Post-Race Show
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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. Growing up in Emporia, Kan., I can't tell you how many times I drove past Kansas Speedway when it was being built and dreamed about what it would be like to come back as a Nextel Cup driver. I guess this shows your dreams can come true. But before I get on the big track I'm going to run on two of the dirt tracks where I won several championships. One of the races will be Friday night at Lakeside Speedway, about five miles down the road from Kansas Speedway. To be able to run in front of all of your friends and people that don't get to see you all the time means a lot. It's also a stressful weekend because you want to run well and not disappoint anybody, especially yourself. It's fun to revisit the past and see how far I've come. I'm sure there will be a lot of guys out there on Friday that want to beat a Cup driver and prove themselves. That's more stressful for me than running a Cup race. Heck, I don't want to go back and run bad because I have made it to the Cup Series. Going from the dirt track to the big track will be interesting. I'm sure I'll be rusty, but usually once you get through the heat races you're going pretty well. I've been in a couple of dirt races this year and haven't won yet, so I'm looking forward to showing I haven't lost it. The first time I ran at Kansas Speedway was in a Busch Series test a few years back. Now that I'm back for a Cup race it means a lot to me, and I hope I've helped bring attention to the local tracks by my success. It's a cookie-cutter track. If it was in California or New York I'd say it was boring, but it's not boring for me because it's home. It would be the perfect scenario to get my first win there. It definitely would be a long night, put it that way. It felt good to win the Busch Series race last week at Dover. Everybody has been working hard to get me to Victory Lane, but I'm still looking for that first Cup win. To be honest, our Cup car was better than our Busch car last weekend. If you had asked me before that race which one I would have had a better chance of winning in I would have told you the Cup car. I wasn't happy with the Busch car at all. The last week-and-a-half have been pretty interesting with my teammates, Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton, having their teams accused of manipulating the air pressure in their tires at New Hampshire. That was absolutely not true. If they were going to do that for them they would have done the same for me [he laughs], and you saw how poorly I ran at New Hampshire [24th]. It's frustrating when your teammates are being attacked. I know how hard everybody at RCR works. I guess it's the nature of the game. If you're winning and running good somebody is going to accuse you of cheating. When Roush was winning all of those races last year I'm sure somebody was accusing them of cheating, too. We've been down the last two or three years and have worked hard to get back on top. It's too bad some bad press could hurt that. I know what that's like. Anybody that's won races and been successful has been accused of cheating. Racing dirt cars in the Midwest, we got to winning a lot around 2001 and 2002 and got accused of using traction control. At the track I ran at, it wasn't a place where traction control would affect you. It was frustrating. You know how hard you work to be successful, from the shop during the week to the track. To have that ruined by being accused of cheating makes you mad. It also adds fuel to the fire to make you want to win even more. | 
