NASCAR Richmond 2014: Clint Bowyer comes up just short of Chase

Clint Bowyer made it interesting, but it wasn’t enough as he came up just short of making the Chase for the Sprint Cup Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway.

Bowyer entered Richmond needing either a victory or strong finish accompanied with problems for Greg Biffle, who provisionally held the final Chase slot. The Michael Waltrip Racing driver had one of the strongest cars in the Federated Auto Parts 400, continually running up front, while Biffle struggled with an ill-handling car.

But pole-sitter Brad Keselowski was dominant and Bowyer could never mount a serious challenge for the lead. Keselowski ended up leading 383 of 400 laps in taking the win, with Biffle eventually sorting out his handling issues to finish 19th.

Bowyer fell seven points shy of qualifying for the playoffs.

“That’s all I had, that’s all we had as a race team,” Bowyer said. “Everybody gave it their all this week. That’s all you can ask for and we were third-best.”

Although winless on the year, Bowyer was seemingly in good position to secure a Chase spot before mechanical troubles sidelined him the week before at Atlanta Motor Speedway. He went from being 31 points clear of Biffle to trailing by 23 entering Saturday’s regular season finale.

“The way our season has been all year is we’ll have a strong run like this and then something stupid will happen like the damn transmission breaking in half and it forces you back in a hole and you spend the next month digging yourself out of that hole,” Bowyer said. “We just never could race like we did tonight all season long.

“We would get a step ahead and have a good run and the very next week we’d get our wings clipped out from underneath us. That’s racing.”

Bowyer has not missed the Chase since 2011 and two years ago finished runner-up in the championship. But MWR has struggled this season to produce consistently fast cars, and Toyota’s engines have lagged in horsepower compared to the Ford and Chevrolet teams.

Team Penske (Ford) owns seven combined victories between Keselowski and Joey Logano, while its Chevrolet counterpart, Hendrick Motorsports, has 10 wins divided between Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne.

Joe Gibbs Racing is the only Toyota-backed team to reach Victory Lane, with Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin each having a single win.

“When you make that Chase you want to be able to compete for a championship,” Bowyer said. “I’m an optimist, but I’m a realist and right now realistically we don’t have a shot at winning that championship against the competition we’re running against. We’ve got a lot of work to do, a lot of racing left to build on and win some races and piss them guys off running for a championship.”