LONG POND, Pa. -- If Clint Bowyer continues to surge higher in the Nextel Cup standings in an attempt to make his first Chase, he won't be able to get away with the stunt he pulled Saturday evening at Pocono Raceway.

But there's a real possibility he won't want to.

Someone exiting the bucolic track's massive infield spotted Bowyer and a friend cruising the infield -- virtually undetected -- in a golf cart.

That figures, since during Sunday's Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono, the ESPN broadcast crew cited Bowyer as the Chase for the Nextel Cup's forgotten man because he's the only driver in the current 12-man field yet to win a race this season.

Bowyer doesn't take it as a mar of his record -- quite the contrary.

"I feel like we are, a little bit," Bowyer said. "And I think that's the biggest thing; that we just haven't won a race -- we haven't proven ourselves yet."

The legitimacy of Bowyer's run for the Chase definitely is more than a speck on the series' radar screen. He and his 10th-place No. 07 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet team have been part of the top 10 for the past three weeks and 16 of the 22 weeks of this season.

Owner Childress is adamant the win may not be far away.

"They're going to win a race," Childress said after exiting the Nextel Cup garage, on his way to his motor coach before leaving the facility. "All three of our cars, we've just got to step it up another notch."

Bowyer's teammates, Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick, are fourth and ninth, respectively, in the standings. After finishing 17th on Sunday, Harvick is only 48 points ahead of Bowyer.

"We've got some things we're going to step it up with, if we get in the Chase," Childress said. "But we got to get in the Chase. So once we get there, hopefully we'll break it out, [but] we've got some more stuff coming."

Childress refused to go into much detail about whether the performance tweaks would concern engines, the chassis, bodies or all of the above.

But with the RCR/Dale Earnhardt Inc. engine department merger going full steam ahead, with a planned debut of a new, combined Chevrolet R07 engine package by the Chase, it seems the major experimentation might be under the hood. (Continued)