Friday Dover Notebook

Friday Dover Notebook

Notebook items:

·        Clint Bowyer announces one-year deal with HScott Motorsports

·        Drivers applaud expanded restart zone

Oct. 2, 2015

By Reid Spencer

NASCAR Wire Service

Clint Bowyer announces one-year deal with HScott Motorsports

DOVER, Del.—Clint Bowyer doesn’t view his one-year deal with HScott Motorsports, announced on Friday at Dover International Speedway, merely as a temporary parking place.

With sponsorship from 5-hour Energy, Bowyer will spend the 2016 season behind the wheel of an HScott Chevrolet before taking over the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet from Tony Stewart, who announced his planned retirement on Wednesday and presented Bowyer as his eventual replacement.

But Bowyer intends to make more than a stop-gap measure of his brief sojourn at HScott Motorsports.

“I don’t want to leave (team owner) Harry (Scott) with nothing at the end of this,” Bowyer said on Friday at Dover, the site of Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series AAA 400 (2:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN). “We’re going to build a great program here.

“And when I leave there, I want to be able to leave there (with) him having a winning organization and an established team to where he can put the next driver in and go for broke just like he did with us. That’s what I want to do with HScott Motorsports next year.”

HScott will maintain a technical alliance with Hendrick Motorsports and Stewart-Haas.

Bowyer will finish the season with Michael Waltrip Racing, which will cease operations at the end of the year. Bowyer qualified for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, but lackluster finishes in the first Chase race and a 25-point penalty assessed for infractions at Chicagoland have put him in a must-win situation on Sunday at Dover.

Following Dover, the four drivers with the lowest points totals and winless in the three-race Challenger Round will be eliminated from the playoffs. Denny Hamlin and Matt Keneth, race winners at Chicago and New Hampshire, respectively, have already punched their ticket into the 12-driver Contender Round. The other 10 spots will be filled by the winner at Dover if he is a Chase driver, with the remaining positions filled by Chase drivers with the most points.

But Bowyer is already looking forward to the next stage of his career.

“Arguably, this is the best opportunity that I have had in my whole career,” Bowyer said. “It starts here at HScott Motorsports, and it keeps building, and that is the neatest thing about all of this. I loved the opportunity that I had with the people and the culture at MWR.

“That day is over with and that brings nervous times, for a race car driver or anybody. So, you’ve lost your job. What does that mean? What do we do? To be coming out of all of that and smell like a rose is amazing. It truly has become the best opportunity that I have ever had to win races and compete for a championship.”

Scott currently fields Sprint Cup teams for Michael Annett and Justin Allgaier. Annett will return to the team next year, but no deal has been announced for Allgaier.

DRIVERS APPLAUD EXPANDED RESTART ZONE

In response to drivers’ concerns over restart rules and the ostensible growing tendency of drivers to break them, NASCAR announced this week a doubling of the length of the restart zones.

In feet, the length of the restart zone has been set at two times pit road speed. At Dover, where pit road speed is 35 mph, the restart zone measured 70 feet. Now it’s 140 feet, and most drivers felt the expansion will restore, appropriately, some of the advantage the race leader should have.

“To lengthen that box, I think is a great move,” said six-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson. “I’m hopeful that they lengthen the box and bring it closer to the start/finish line. I think it will slow down some of the three- and four-wide into Turn 1 scenarios we have had. It will be less distance to get speed built up closer to the start/finish line and I think we will maybe control that space a little bit better.  

“We should have better side-by-side restarts, which is what everybody is after. And then, obviously, the goal here is to give control back to the guy that has earned it – to the leader. That’s what happens, and I’m in favor of it. It’s a good call, and I am excited to see how it plays out.”

Team Penske driver Joey Logano, whose teammate, Brad Keselowski, was penalized for jumping a restart last Sunday at New Hampshire, approved of the rule change.

“This doesn’t seem like anything that’s crazy, out-of-the-box, to me, as far as the rules change,” Logano said. “I remember growing up racing short tracks and stuff, and you could hit the gas in Turn 3 and go whenever you want. I feel like this kind of opens the box, which is good. There’s going to be plenty of gamesmanship still, and I think NASCAR has also set the precedent with what they did last week and enforcing the rule. 

“That’s something they need to continue doing. It’s not just having it happen one time and then scare us, and then don’t do anything about it for the next three weeks. They finally put their foot down last week on what we can and can’t do, and that rule needs to be consistent and make sure that, when they see something, they make the same call and be consistent with that.”