Around the Track: Texas

Nextel Cup rookie Clint Bowyer finished 25th last week at Atlanta Motor Speedway to move into a tie for 17th in the points standings.

It was his fourth consecutive finish of 23rd or worse after consecutive top-10s at Dover and Kansas City.

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Now he returns to Texas Motor Speedway, where in April he started 12th and finished 19th.

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.

Well, we made it through my Halloween Party on Tuesday night in good enough shape to run the Truck, Busch and Nextel Cup Series this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.

It was good. It was big.

But I had a day in between leaving for Texas to recover, so I'll be just fine.

There was a crowd at the party. We had guys from Busch shop, Cup shop ... just a lot of people from Richard Childress Racing. We had a haunted trail through the woods and a haunted house in the backyard.

I came in a 1970s outfit. A buddy of mine, his dad kept a bunch of his outfits from the '70s, so I broke out one of those.

I had the polyester bellbottoms. That's a must. I had a big-collared shirt, a leather jacket with a big collar on it and leather shoes. I also wore a long, blond afro.

The afro was pretty funny. I've never had long hair below, especially not an afro and this definitely a big one. I didn't know they made blond afros, but it matched the outfit.

There were a lot of good costumes. One of our guys dressed as a hockey player with his teeth knocked out. Halloween is great time to have a party because you get to see how creative people can be.

It's good to have times like that where you forget about racing, even though I don't really ever forget about racing. I'm a racer and racing always is on my mind.

But it was a good break after last weekend at Atlanta. We had a top-10 car for more than 480 laps, and I got run into from behind going onto pit road and tore the car up.

We lost track position and went back out and got caught up in a wreck the first lap of the restart.

It was a frustrating end. And the bummer part about the whole thing was that was a good car and it was destroyed when we should have had a top-10.

	Credit: Nate Mecha/HSP
	RECORD TIME Clint Bowyer's lap of 184.464 mph around Texas Motor Speedway earned him the pole for Friday's Craftsman Truck Series Silverado 350K -- and a track record.  •   Complete story,  click here •   Complete lineup,  click here

It wasn't the car we were going to take to Texas this weekend, but it was one we would have run again, maybe in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

I'm looking forward to running all three races this weekend. I've never done all three on one weekend.

I know Tony Stewart has done it and Kyle Busch has done it. It'll be a challenge, but the good side is I'll get a lot of time on the track.

I've always wanted to do all three. The opportunity presented itself to run the truck when Chevrolet called. The Truck Series is a blast for me and we've run well every time I've run in it.

There'll be some adjustments. It's a lot different going from one of those machines to the other, the truck especially. It has so much drag on it and you can be so aggressive with it.

But they're so much fun to drive. You can get away with stuff in the truck that you couldn't with the Busch or Cup car.

We've got to pay close attention to the schedule, because we'll definitely be busy. I don't plan on changing uniforms like some guys do. I hope to just throw on the Jack Daniel's uniform and go run.

And no, I don't plan to put a helmet over the afro. I keep my hair short.