LOUDON, N.H. -- Clint Bowyer is far from reeling as the Race to the Chase continues this weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Bowyer remains as confident as ever. But it's also a fact that, after two sub-par finishes punctuated by crashes at Daytona (36th) and Kentucky (35th), he's fallen to 12th in the standings and has just eight races to get back into the top 10.

The more expedient method would be for Bowyer to win, but that hasn't happened in the past 21 starts.

The good thing is, Bowyer's last victory came at this venue in the 2010 Chase opener. And even better, during his past five starts at each of the seven tracks that lead up the Chase cutoff race in September at Richmond, Bowyer's best average finish -- 10th -- is at New Hampshire.

Bowyer's averages at the schedule's next three venues are very similar -- 11.6 at Indianapolis and 11th at Pocono. His worst three are Bristol (22.6), Watkins Glen (18.8) and Atlanta (17.8). Michigan reflects some middle ground, where Bowyer's average finish during his past five starts is 12.2.

While winning Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 would elevate him into the first wild-card position, Bowyer realizes that to get in position to have an impact on the Chase, he needs to do well Sunday and then follow through with seven more strong finishes.

"This is a crucial time for us," Bowyer said. "We've got them breathing down our necks and we're still within reaching distance of the cars in front of us, so this is a good time to get things pointed back in the right direction, points-wise."

Heading into Daytona earlier this month, Bowyer was eighth in the standings after eight top-10 finishes in the space of 12 races. He's since gone from being 36 points clear of 11th to being on the outside, looking in.

Asked how critical it was that Bowyer finish well at Loudon, teammate Kevin Harvick hesitated a moment, then definitively answered.

"He needs to run good here and I thoroughly believe that they will," Harvick said of Bowyer. "Just because it's been a really good race track for him and he feels confident coming here and knows it's a good race track for him. I wouldn't say it's the end of the world by any means if he doesn't [run well]; but it would definitely be a huge boost if he does."

Bowyer's crew chief, Vermont native Shane Wilson, was smiling Friday morning around the garage, and not just because of his familiar surroundings. He and Bowyer are going for their fourth consecutive top-10 finish here and their second consecutive win.

"Being here has definitely got to be a good help," Wilson said. "Hopefully we'll keep up and even on our bad days here, we still run good. Clint's good here and we always try to bring the best car we can for him, the lightest piece we've got and hopefully it'll be a good weekend.

Bowyer certainly started it off that way during Friday's first practice, finishing at the top of the speed chart with a fastest lap of 28.379 seconds. In qualifying, Bowyer slipped to 12th and lost the chance to break a 136-race pole drought. His last start on the front came at -- you guessed it -- Loudon in September 2007.

Bowyer now must focus on erasing the slide that began at Daytona and was exacerbated at Kentucky.

"You go to Daytona and it's bound to happen. We've had such great runs over the last few years at Daytona. You're not going to go to a place like that 10 times and get 10 good finishes -- you're just not -- it's too much of a crap shoot. You're going to get caught up in something sooner or later and unfortunately it was my time."

Bowyer said Kentucky really galled him after he cut down a tire and crashed after 259 laps.

"Kentucky, the next week, that's where it really hurts. That's what has really set us back here in the points, and I can't think of a better place right here in New Hampshire to get things turned back around and pointed in the right direction."

Bowyer spent the better part of last week at the RCR shop, trying to figure out what happened and admitted that the current championship format is a little daunting.

"I tell you, with this crazy wild-card thing, this is a good track for us to get a win and solidify ourselves in the Chase," Bowyer said. "So, it's an important weekend for sure."

Harvick said a team must maintain its focus when things go bad.

"I think you just have to keep going -- take it one week at a time," Harvick said. "You can't take one week and get too high with the highs and take another week and get too low with the lows. You have to treat 'em all the same. Every week I come to the race track I think 'man, it's been forever since we've been to the race track last.'

"But I think that's a good attitude that we take, as a team. You just can't dwell on it because there are so many weeks and so many things happening that you have to put it behind you in order to be competitive week-in and week-out."

After just one day, Bowyer is proving just that. And in the process, he dismissed any fallout from his last victory, after which NASCAR passed his race-winning car in inspection at the track, but then took it back to its Research & Development center where it failed an in-depth chassis analysis.

"Hey; the trophy is in my house," Bowyer said, laughing. "And I'm [ready] to have another one, there. We've run well here. I've got to get things turned back around. That's the biggest thing right now, for us, is just two bad weekends in a row.

"The biggest thing that I don't understand about it is that it passed post-race inspection and it gets back to something that nobody understands or knows a lot about; which is fine. I was OK. A penalty is a penalty and if you're caught, you're caught; it doesn't matter what I think at the end of the day -- we got pretty much a season-ending penalty.

"But it is what it is. It doesn't matter. It's behind me -- it really is. It's frustrating for me to have to come back here and answer questions about last year because I'm worried about last week, and overcoming last week -- forget about last year."

Bowyer would love to have better memories from this weekend to carry him into the final off-weekend this season.

"It would be a lot of fun if we won here; it would be a good time for an off-weekend," Bowyer said. "But you know, I'm confident that we'll run well here. That's the biggest thing. Points aside and everything else, you don't want to run bad. We want to run up front.

"If things happen when you're running up front, you've got a lot better feeling about it when something happens. Like at the end of the race last week, just to add insult to injury, the car blows out and we crash the car and end up destroying a car at the end of the night after being miserable all night.

"I was like, 'why didn't this happen on lap 1? Why drag me through all this and then really destroy me at the end of the race?' It was a pretty tough one to swallow."

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