Clint Bowyer on his way to Texas

CORNELIUS, N.C. — No.15 5-hour ENERGY Toyota driver Clint Bowyer heads to Texas Motor Speedway for Sunday’s 500-mile NASCAR Sprint Cup with a new Extra Strength Sour Apple 5-hour ENERGY camouflage paint scheme.

Clint Bowyer, Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota

Photo by: Action Sports Photography

Bowyer, who finished a Chase-best third at Martinsville last week, has three top-five and eight top-10 finishes in his 15 starts at Texas. He has led 84 laps with an average finish of 13th. Bowyer ranks sixth in the Sprint Cup Series standings trailing co-leaders Matt Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson by 55 points with three races remaining in the season.

BOWYER ON TEXAS: “We tested at Texas last week and had a good test. I always look forward to getting back down to Texas, but obviously it’s a little bit different when you do get down there to race. There is a little more rubber on the track with more cars and trucks on the track. Overall I think we had good speed and stacked up well against the competition and the car felt good. I’m looking forward to getting down there and another solid run. We need a win … bad! Texas is one of the coolest places to win. I hope we can do that this weekend.”

ON YEAR TO DATE: “We’ve definitely turned the page when we went to these tracks a second time this year. We had a good notebook of what not to do and usually you can run better because of that. That said, we had a pretty big setback for our organization and we’ve been able to bounce back from that a little bit, but we had a good run last week at Martinsville. We haven’t won a race yet and we need to win a race desperately bad and I think we are capable of winning one of these last three races. We’ve had a great season. Looking back on this season I’m very proud of the season we’ve had. We’ve been very consistent week in and week out up front for our sponsors. We were second in points the entire second half of the season, so definitely it’s been a good year, but we are definitely missing that win in the win column.”

ON THE TOP TWO DRIVERS: “Look at the two drivers that are tied for the points championship – unless they hand one of the other guys a bone then there is no chance of anyone catching them. Those two teams have elevated themselves to championship level teams and that is your race for the championship.”

MWR