Bowyer rallies from back to win Sam's Town 250

Oct 23, 2005 11:49





Clint Bowyer celebrates with members of his pit crew after winning the Sam's Town 250. Credit: AP
Bowyer rallies from back to win Sam's Town 250

The Associated Press
October 22, 2005
08:31 PM EDT (00:31 GMT)

MILLINGTON, Tenn. -- -- Clint Bowyer won his second Busch Series race of the season, rallying from deep in the field to win the Sam's Town 250 at Memphis Motorsports Park on Saturday.

Boyer worked his way to the front after starting 35th in the 43-car field and dominated the second half of the race. With the win, he closed to within 100 points of defending series champion Martin Truex Jr. with three events remaining.

Truex, who started from the pole, dominated early and wound up third behind J.J. Yeley, leads with 4,511 points, while Bowyer improved to 4,411.



"We did everything we could do, even though I put us in a bad spot," said Bowyer, who crashed his ACDelco Chevrolet in the final turn of his second qualifying lap in the morning. ''We'd had the fastest car in practice, and I was trying to prove it in qualifying. Maybe it just made me mad enough to do what I had to do."

Crew chief Gil Martin, who will follow Bowyer to the Nextel Cup Series next season in Richard Childress' Racing No. 07 car, said, "Once we looked at the car, and saw it was just cosmetic damage, we weren't worried. It didn't look too pretty, but it was set up for this track, and that was important."

Bowyer, who was trying to shake off a 33rd-place finish at Charlotte last week, was in the middle of the fray with a sledge hammer.

"I was an auto body man. I know how to knock out dents," said Bowyer, whose other win this season came at Nashville in June.

Truex, after starting on the pole, faded a bit to third and chose to remain there rather than gamble on tires late in the race.

"You don't want to lose track position in that situation -- and if we had gone back we might have found even more trouble," Truex said.

The race featured a record 15 caution flags, including two multicar accidents in the fourth turn during the final 50 laps. Fourteen of 43 cars didn't finish the race, tying an event record. No one was injured in the mishaps.

"We had about a third-place car [Saturday]," Truex said. "We got a bit better, then adjusted on our last pit stop and messed it up. We were about where we belonged, so it was a good day."

The leaders stayed on the track through the final 80 laps, and eight caution flags with subsequent restarts.

"Restarts earlier this season, do we have to talk about them? I cost us a couple of wins on restarts this year," Bowyer said. "That's something I've really worked on this year, and it showed [Saturday]. I got good jumps, especially the last five times."

Former series champion David Green finished fourth.

Carl Edwards, whose car was stopped for speeding as he tried to get from morning Nextel Cup practice at Martinsville, Va., to Memphis to run this event, arrived moments before the race. He started in the 38th position and wound up fifth.

Rounding out the top 10 were Paul Menard, Denny Hamlin, Tony Raines, Johnny Sauter and Jason Keller.

After a week off, the series will resume Nov. 5 with the O'Reilly Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas.

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