Bowyer all smiles after fiery end at Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Clint Bowyer finished Sunday's Daytona 500 in a spectacular way that neither him nor anyone who watched it will likely ever forget.

Sliding across the finish line with his No. 07 Chevrolet upside down and on fire after getting involved in a multi-car crash down the frontstretch on the final lap, Bowyer was asked what he thought about it shortly afterward.

"Actually," he said, "it was pretty cool."

It didn't look it. If anything, it looked hot as flames erupted from under his engine hood. At least when the car finally came to a rest, it had flipped back right-side up and he was able to climb out of it quickly. He was taken to the infield care center in an ambulance, but walked out soon thereafter and said he felt fine ... and fortunate.

Asked what happened, Bowyer said: "I saw the No. 5 [of Kyle Busch] turn sideways. I thought I cleared him. I thought I was out of the deal. I thought I had gotten out of it unscathed.

"Then somebody clipped us in the rear and away she went. It was unfortunate."

Bowyer said that he was especially disappointed to learn that the wreck caused him to drop to an 18th-place finish once the final results were posted.

"I really thought there are a lot of cars on the board up there that we were ahead of. We need to get to looking into that because when the caution came out, I felt like I was ahead of quite a few of them," he said. "It sucks that everybody was going for it and I saw them all wreck and I thought I was in the clear, and then somebody clipped me and turned us over.

"But oh well, we were just racing hard. Everybody was going for it. It's the Daytona 500."

Bowyer said that he wasn't too concerned his car was on fire as he crossed the line. He had what he said was a messier problem.

"There was just a lot of mud coming in to the car," he said. "It was fairly uneventful other than the mud coming in. It all happened so quick. I flipped over and then here comes the mud. I tell you, if much more mud had come in I'm not sure I would have been able to get out."

Prior to the wreck, Bowyer was poised to put a positive finishing touch on what had been an up-and-down race. He ran in the top 10 for 27 laps, but at one point fell a lap down because of a pit-road violation on Lap 126 that caused him to lose track position and the pack of cars with which he had been drafting.

"We had a good car, but I kept making mistakes," Bowyer said. "I made that mistake on pit road that got us a lap down -- but, hey, how about my teammate Kevin Harvick winning the race?"

Bowyer said that the one-three finish of Harvick and Jeff Burton, his Richard Childress Racing teammates, illustrate how strong a team RCR can be this season. But when his night came to its upside-down, fiery end, all he could do was punch at the chilly Daytona Beach night-time air in total frustration.

"I was mad that I wrecked my racecar," he said, gesturing to the battered, smoldering No. 07 after it had been towed back to his garage area. "I mean, look at it. It's pretty much junk."