Bowyer Winds Up with Sixth-Place Finish at 
Mexico City Road Course

Race/Date: Corona 200 – April 20, 2008 - Location: Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez – Mexico City - Start Position: Eighth - Finish Position: Sixth - Points Position: First

MEXICO CITY – Clint Bowyer looked at the big picture of the 2008 NASCAR Nationwide Series championship point battle on the tricky Autodromos Hermanos Rodriguez road course and brought home the No. 2 BB&T Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS to a solid sixth-place finish in the Corona 200.

Bowyer maintains the points lead but is now just nine markers ahead of second-place Carl Edwards, who finished fourth.

With still just a small amount of road course experience, the Emporia, Kan., native wheeled the No. 2 BB&T entry around the eight-turn, 2.518-mile road course during qualifying in 1:29:090 minutes at 101.749 mph. He would line up in the eighth position to take the green flag for the 80-lap feature.

Seven caution flags, including two red flag stoppages of play that consumed a total of 30 minutes, created a start-stop theme to the event. Bowyer ran as high as fourth and, after a green-flag stop, as low as 19th but over the final 20 laps pulled himself back into the top 10 and knocking on the door of the top five. As the laps wound down, with the nose of the No. 2 Chevrolet near the rear bumper of Patrick Carpentier’s fifth-place running machine, Bowyer made the determination to be satisfied with his position instead of making a risky pass and potentially losing a number of positions (re: points) in the process.

Kyle Busch earned his third consecutive NASCAR Nationwide Series victory of the 2008 season. He was followed by Marcos Ambrose, Scott Pruett, Carl Edwards and Carpentier. Bowyer’s RCR teammate Scott Wimmer finished seventh.

Bowyer will next pilot the No. 2 Camping World Chevrolet in the Aaron’s 312 at Talladega Superspeedway. Live coverage of the event will be televised live on ABC Saturday, April 26 beginning at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The 10th race of the 2008 season will broadcast live on the Motor Racing Network and Sirius Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the second restrictor-plate race of the season will be televised Friday, April 25 on SPEED beginning at 5 p.m. EDT.

• CLINT BOWYER QUOTES –

“Will (Lind, RCR Director of Competition) was spotting for me on the backside and reminded me that the position in front of me was worth five points but I could possibly lose a hundred points if something went wrong. Sometimes you just have to think big picture when you’re racing for a championship. Every driver wants to compete for the position in front of him, whether it’s first or 21st, so not going for it goes against what we do naturally. I guess I’ll look at this as a race where I learned to be patient.”

RCR Riding High Heading Into Off Weekend

WELCOME, N.C. (April 17, 2008) – Richard Childress Racing’s three-car NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams are riding a wave of recent success heading into the division’s second off weekend of the 2008 season.

Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick and third-year Sprint Cup Series driver Clint Bowyer are all solidly inside the top 10 in points. Bowyer solidified his place in the top 10 following a runner-up finish last weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.

Burton, driver of RCR’s No. 31 AT&T Chevrolet Impala SS and current point leader, has come out of the gates strong with a win last month at Bristol Motor Speedway, three top-five and six top-10 finishes.

At the same time, Burton enjoys an 80-point advantage over his closest competitor, Kyle Busch, with 28 races remaining on the 2008 schedule. The South Boston, Va., native holds an 86-point edge over Dale Earnhardt Jr., in third and a 99-point lead over Jimmie Johnson in fourth. Harvick is fifth, 103 behind Burton.

Burton has yet to finish outside the top 15 in the season’s opening eight races and is the only driver to have completed all 2,699 laps of competition this year.

“It all starts with Richard there’s no question,” said Burton. “When Martin (Truex) broke a couple of weeks ago, that’s been on Richard’s mind about the engine thing, it’s been driving him nuts. That’s just how he is, because he believes we have to run every lap. When we don’t run a lap he gets very frustrated about it or when we have a mechanical problem that really bothers him. Not only does he own all the stuff and is our boss, he’s the head guy when it comes to reliability and he’s the one you have to answer to when you’re not finishing races.”

Meanwhile, Harvick has been the model of consistency over the first eight events and has recorded top-20 showings in all eight races. The Bakersfield, Calif., driver has earned two top fives and four top 10s so far this season and if it hadn’t been for running out of fuel with only a handful of laps remaining last weekend in Phoenix, Harvick would still be second in points.

Despite slipping to fifth following last weekend’s misfortune, the 2007 Daytona 500 champ is still confident that his Todd Berrier-led Shell-Pennzoil team is just beginning to hit its stride.

“I think we’ve run really well,” explained Harvick in Phoenix. “We’ve been very consistent. We haven’t shown that dominance on a week-to-week basis as far as being able to lead a bunch of laps so we still have work to do. We’ve been very consistent over the first several weeks and we have to maintain that consistency. When we’ve had a bad day we’ve kept it so it’s not a 30th or 25th-place bad day.

“We’ve kept that kind of in the championship form I guess you can call it,” continued the 11-time Sprint Cup Series winner. “That was one of our goals coming in … when we had a bad day our goal was to try to finish in the top 12 because that’s what we felt like it was going to take. Now we fell a little short of that last weekend but 19th is still better than 25th or 30th.”

While Burton and Harvick will enjoy away from the track, Bowyer is on the road with the NASCAR Nationwide Series racing south of the border at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City.

Bowyer, the Nationwide Series point leader, got off to a dismal start after three consecutive finishes of 19th or worse. The 2007 championship contender, along with his Gil Martin-led Jack Daniel’s team have bounced back in high fashion since Las Vegas and put together a string of five straight top-10 finishes, including a pair of top fives.

Following a second-place finish last weekend, Bowyer gained three spots and jumped from 11th to eighth in points.

“We’ve got to get better but obviously we’ve come a long way,” explained Bowyer. “I’m very proud of everybody at RCR for putting together equipment that makes Jeff (Burton) and Kevin (Harvick) and me look good. But we’ve got a long ways to go. We’re not going to sit back and watch it happen. We’re going to make it happen.”

Following the off-weekend, NASCAR’s senior circuit saddles up for a 12-race stretch kicking off next Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway – a famed 2.66-mile mega-oval situated approximately 45 minutes east of Birmingham, Ala., and 90 miles west of Atlanta.

Live coverage of the Aaron’s 499 from Talladega Superspeedway will be televised live on FOX Sunday, April 27 beginning at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The second restrictor-plate race of 2008 will be broadcast live on the Motor Racing Network and Sirius Satellite Radio. Qualifying for round nine of the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship will be televised live on ESPN2 Saturday, April 26 at 11 a.m. EDT. MRN and Sirius Satellite Radio will air qualifying updates live.