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Bowyer's Chance At Title Appears To Be Gone

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 5, 2007

FORT WORTH, Texas - Clint Bowyer's only hope of winning the championship was for Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson to have problems.

Instead, it was Bowyer who had a costly problem in Sunday's Dickies 500.

Bowyer worked his way to sixth after starting 29th, but he had to make two green-flag pit stops late in the race because of a tire vibration. He lost two laps and finished 19th, which left him 181 points behind new leader Johnson.

The margin is almost certainly too much to make up with only two races remaining.

"I felt a vibration on Lap 247 of 334 and thought it was a loose right-rear wheel, but it turned out to be a loose left-rear wheel," Bowyer said. "We pitted twice, and there just wasn't enough racing left to get the track position back."

Bowyer had finished no worse than 12th in the first seven Chase races. He won at New Hampshire and finished second at Kansas and Charlotte.

"We are down but not out in the Chase," he said. "There is no give-up in this team. We are going to take it a lap at a time, a race at a time and keep fighting until the checkered flag falls at Homestead."

QUIET STEWART: Defending race champion Tony Stewart failed to lead a lap for the fourth consecutive week and finished 11th with minor damage sustained in a multicar crash on Lap 219.

Casey Mears got loose and slid into Stewart in traffic. Kevin Harvick snuck through, but Mark Martin, David Gilliland and Dale Jarrett couldn't avoid damage.

After failing to finish only one of his first 21 races this year, Martin has gotten caught up in wrecks in two consecutive races.

BETTER RESULT: Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch again had strong cars. This time, they had a little bit of luck, too, and finished third and fourth.

Both had a chance to win a week earlier at Atlanta, but Busch had a slow late-race pit stop and both damaged their cars when Denny Hamlin's engine cut out in front of them because of water in his fuel.

"It feels good to get a good finish finally," Truex said. "We've had a rough stretch here. We've had some great cars and a lot better than what we had tonight. So it feels good to finally get the team something they deserve."

Busch, who led six times for a race-high 163 laps and has led 336 laps in the past three races, moved up to fourth in the Chase standings.

TOP 35 BATTLE: Bill Elliott and Kyle Petty, driving teams that are fighting to finish the year in the top 35 in the owners points and have guaranteed starting berths in the first five 2008 races, were victims of a wreck on Lap 132.

Elliott finished 36th in the Wood Brothers No. 21 Ford and Petty 42nd in Petty Enterprises' No. 44 Dodge after David Stremme lost control because of a tire going down on Lap 132.

"It looked like he tried to correct," Elliott said of Stremme. "He was already on the flat, and then he overcorrected and came up in front of Kyle. I saw what was going to happen, and I was going to try to get around Kyle, but I was done no matter what I did."

Petty's car is 34th in the owners points, with a 150-point cushion over 36th place. The Wood Brothers car is 36th.

NINTH DNF FOR REUTIMANN: Zephyrhills' David Reutimann started and finished last, retiring after 90 laps with motor failure after contact from another car.

"We were struggling and got kind of jammed up early and killed the right rear fender," Reutimann said. "Everybody stacked up on a restart, and somebody ran into our right-rear corner, and then the motor blew up."

Reutimann has had five engine failures in 25 starts. He failed to finish three additional races because of crashes and one because of a broken fuel pump.

HOT LAPS: Carl Edwards had a tough race the day after clinching the Busch Series championship, He finished 26th in an ill-handling car after twice drawing pit road penalties. ... Johnson's 32nd career victory tied him for 19th on the all-time list with Jarrett and Stewart. ... The eighth race of the Chase drew a large crowd - estimated at 183,000. ... Scott Riggs finished 13th in his final start in the Gillette-Evernham No. 10 Dodge. Open-wheel veteran Patrick Carpentier is replacing him next year and will attempt to qualify at Phoenix and Homestead. ... Actor Vince Vaughn was the honorary pace truck driver.

Tony Fabrizio

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