Bowyer salvages OK finish, holds steady in points

LONG POND, Pa. -- Riding the momentum of back-to-back fourth-place finishes that positioned Clint Bowyer-- for the time being -- in the Chase, it almost got knocked from his grasp Sunday at Pocono Raceway.

With Mark Martin hot on his heels for that 12th spot in the standings, it took everything Bowyer and his No. 33 team could muster to hold onto their points position with a 15-place finish after another promising run was put in peril.

Standings

Chase bubble

Pos.	Driver	+/- 12th
10.	Carl Edwards	+102
11.	Greg Biffle	+88
12.	Clint Bowyer	--
13.	Mark Martin	-34
14.	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	-129

• Complete Standings

Despite starting 40th in the Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500, Bowyer had moved up considerably before a heap of trouble late in the race loomed more threatening than the rain clouds which hovered over the 2.5-mile track.

After a bump from Jimmie Johnson sent Kurt Busch into Bowyer on the Pocono straightaway, Bowyer limped back to pit road with a flat tire, a broken skirt and jack post, and a hole in the exhaust. Shortly thereafter, officials red-flagged the race and at the time, it looked as if Martin would leapfrog Bowyer in the standings.

• Video: Busch gets turned into Bowyer

However, crew chief Chief Shane Wilson was able to get the car back on track and Bowyer credited his team with never giving up.

"The No. 33 Hartford Chevrolet team fought hard all race long," Bowyer said. "Shane made adjustments throughout the race and we finally got our car dialed in during the late goings."

Asked if the team's strategy changed at all after the red flag, Wilson said Bowyer and the crew were more concerned with getting the car fixed than with keeping their position in the standings, adding that his team was lucky that the rain stopped and that the race went back to green, giving them a chance to improve on the day.

"The jack post broke on the last stop and we had a few issues going on. The skirt [tore]. too. We got things better there near the end and we were lucky to get the tires on the car," Wilson said.

"We didn't have any luck [Sunday], you know? We got off a couple of times trying to work on [the car], had a couple of bad runs and kind of put it back to where we were having some luck, and with some adjustments we were making some headway."

Wilson acknowledged that the team wasn't as good as they were in the June race at Pocono, when Bowyer finished ninth, but they weren't too far off.

"Starting back, we could just never do anything to get up there [to the front]. We were never quite good enough to take two [tires]," Wilson said.

"I'll commend the 16 [Greg Biffle]. They stuck to their deal and made two work. I kinda wish I would have tried [taking two tires] at least once because we needed something like that to leapfrog 10 spots, because being up front would have given us a little better read. In the end, we looked a little better than I thought we were all day with some damage. All in all, we got 15th and I can't be too discouraged."

Heading into Watkins Glen, Bowyer is 34 points ahead of Martin for the final Chase spot and has an average finish of 15.5 at the road course in New York, including one top-10 finish during his most recent start at the track last season.