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.

"We're going to break out some stuff, and just hope that it all works," Childress said. "Because you don't know until you put it on the track."

The solution won't come too soon for Bowyer, who's been plagued the last two race weekends by engine changes after qualifying that nullified a 26th-place starting position at Indianapolis and a 15th-place effort at Pocono, sending him to the rear of the 43-car fields for the starts.

Clint Bowyer

2007 results

Site	Finish	Points
Daytona	18	17
Fontana	6	6
Las Vegas	36	18
Atlanta	6	9
Bristol	8	8
Martinsville	11	7
Texas	16	6
Phoenix	22	9
Talladega	35	11
Richmond	9	10
Darlington	9	9
Charlotte	29	10
Dover	8	8
Pocono	10	8
Michigan	16	9
Sonoma	4	9
Loudon	37	11
Daytona	7	11
Chicago	10	10
Indianapolis	13	10
Pocono	8	10

• Driver Page | Superstore

He rebounded to finish 13th at Indianapolis and eighth Sunday at Pocono. In the process Sunday, he ran in the top 10 for 76 of the race's 200 laps and led once, the eighth race in which he's done so this season.

His competitive level has got him and his Gil Martin-led crew anticipating the rest of the season.

"I think it's coming, but we can't start dead last every week," Bowyer said. "For two weeks in a row we've had motor trouble, and we've got to get to the bottom of that problem -- and I know that they will, because they're trying just as hard as everybody else."

Bowyer's team made a Saturday engine change at Indy and saved their day; it didn't seem that way Sunday morning when they changed engines in the hours before the Pocono event.

"It makes it hard, when you're adjusting on your car, according to the cars that you're around, and you're around different cars every time you get back on the track," Bowyer said. "Once we got up there [in the top 10] we were too tight. I wish I could have had the car I had in the middle of the race, because I think then I could have run with them and maybe gotten a top-five.

"We tried to make a track bar adjustment there, at the end but for some reason it was jammed up and wouldn't move, so we were pretty much stuck with what we had. But it was a good run nonetheless, and we made a good recovery from the engine failure after practice and Gil and the guys did a good job.

"Coming from the back and being as consistently as strong as we've been helps our confidence level and it says a lot about our team. But you can't win races starting dead last and we've just got to do better at that. We've been qualifying good all year long, but now that it's crunch time we've got to get to starting up there -- and we've got to get to running in the top five to keep contending for the Chase.

"I've just got to make that next step. I've got to get a little bit better in the car and we've got to get better as a team. And when we do that, I think we'll get into that next elite group of drivers -- what I'd consider the top-five front-runner's each and every week -- and we've just got to take that next step to be there."

If Bowyer, who has been as high as sixth in the standings this season and only as low as 17th, after he finished the Daytona 500 on his roof, continues to thrive he might not remain so indistinguishable after he makes the Chase.

And don't be surprised if Bowyer is still rumbling around racetrack infields in a golf cart, just soaking it all in.

"Oh yeah," Bowyer said of Saturday's sighting. "You know, that's what's fun because I'm still fairly unheard of and I can still stay under the radar if I want to. But fans are fans -- and I was a fan.

"I always thought it was neat when you'd see drivers driving around -- just to see 'em. And I think it's a shame that a lot more of these guys don't get out and interact [with the fans].

"I know it's hard and a pain in the butt but it wasn't too long ago there was a day in their lives -- in all of our lives -- when this was just a dream."