Clint Bowyer No. 07 Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet Impala SS
Event Preview Fact Sheet - Event/Date: Samsung 500 – April 6, 2008
Venue: Texas Motor Speedway – Fort Worth, Texas

• NOTES:

* This Week’s Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet at Texas Motor Speedway … Clint Bowyer will pilot Chassis No. 237 from the Richard Childress Racing (RCR) NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) stable. Built new for 2008, this is the same No. 07 Chevrolet Impala SS Bowyer raced to a 19th-place finish at Auto Club Speedway of Southern California in February and to a sixth-place finish last month at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

* Back to Jack … After showcasing a burgundy and gold BB&T paint scheme last weekend at Martinsville, Bowyer’s No. 07 Chevy returns to its traditional black and white Jack Daniel’s paint scheme this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway (TMS). 

• Loop Data Highlights …

o Laps Led … According to NASCAR’s Loop Data Statistics, Bowyer is eighth in the Laps Led category after spending 139 of the 2,048 laps run this season (6.8 percent) atop the leader board.

o Laps in the Top 15 … At the same time, the 2007 championship contender has spent 1,520 laps (74.2 percent) mixing it up in the top 15.

o Average Running Position … Bowyer is ranked 10th in the Average Running Position category. His average position over the NSCS first six races is 14.052. That statistic is derived from the sum of his position on each lap divided by the number of laps run in each race.

o Driver Rating … Meanwhile, the 28-year-old driver is ranked 12th in the Driver Rating category amongst the 39 drivers currently ranked by NASCAR, with an 89.4 Driver Rating. The Driver Rating is a formula that combines the following categories: wins, top-15 finishes, average running position while on the lead lap, average speed under green, fastest lap, most laps led and lead-lap finishes. The maximum a driver can earn in each race is 150 points. The Driver Rating number is used pre-race as a prediction tool and post-race as a performance evaluator.

* A Look Back at Last Week … Bowyer finished 10th last week at Martinsville but still fell from ninth to 12th in points. The top-10 effort was Bowyer’s second-best career finish at the .526-mile paper clip-shaped oval in Sprint Cup Series competition. 

* Keep on Rolling … Bowyer has been running at the end of every race dating back to Phoenix in November 2006, a streak of 43 races. The only other driver running at the end of more consecutive races is his teammate Kevin Harvick who owns a streak of 50 events without a did not finish (DNF). 

* Texas Truck Triumph … Bowyer’s lone NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (NCTS) win came at Texas in November 2006. In just his third career NCTS start, the Emporia, Kan., driver won the pole and went on to beat Kyle Busch and Mike Skinner in Morgan-Dollar Motorsports’ No. 46 Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet Silverado. 

* RCR at TMS … In 37 starts at TMS, dating back to 1997, RCR has recorded one win, four top-five and 12 top-10 finishes with drivers Jeff Burton, Bowyer, Dale Earnhardt, Harvick and Jeff Green. Prior to TMS’s inaugural season, Richard Childress, a former driver in NASCAR’s top division, earned a pair of top 10s while he was still behind the wheel at the now defunct Texas World Speedway in College Station. 

* Four Teams in 2009 … On Tuesday, April 1, RCR and General Mills announced a multi-year partnership for the world’s sixth-largest food company to sponsor the No. 33 Cheerios®/Hamburger Helper® Chevrolet Impala SS beginning with the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season. The driver for the No. 33 Cheerios/Hamburger Helper Chevrolet Impala SS will be announced at a later date. 

* Now, Let’s Talk About This Year … In the season’s first six NSCS races, RCR-prepared cars have earned one win, six top-five and 11 top-10 finishes. At the same time, RCR cars have led 230 of the 2,048 (11.2 percent) of the laps contested this season. Meanwhile, Bowyer’s teammates Burton and Harvick are first and second in points, marking the first time in RCR’s history that Childress-led cars are first and second in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings. 

* Chevy Antes up for Autism … Autism Speaks and Chevrolet recently announced a month-long promotion to help generate up to $1 million for the non-profit organization and create greater awareness of autism, a disorder that is now diagnosed in one in every 150 children. During April – Autism Awareness Month – people who go to the Autism Speaks website ( www.autismspeaks.org  ), can click on the “Help Chevy Help Autism” icon and take a free virtual test drive of the 2008 North American Car of the Year – the all-new Chevy Malibu. Chevrolet has committed to a minimum contribution of $500,000, but every virtual test drive taken gets Chevrolet closer to its goal of donating up to $1 million to Autism Speaks to support its mission of increasing awareness of autism and raising money to fund autism research. Those who participate in the virtual test drive will be offered a free 30-day online trial of XM Satellite Radio. 

* Meet the Press … Bowyer will be available behind the No. 07 transporter Friday, April 4 at 1:40 p.m. to field questions from the gathered media.

* Texas Two-Step … In addition to his duties behind the wheel of the Jack Daniel’s Chevrolet, Bowyer returns to the seat of the No. 2 Camping World Chevy Monte Carlo SS for this weekend’s O’Reilly 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at TMS. Live coverage of the seventh of 35 races on the 2008 Nationwide Series schedule will be televised live on ESPN2 Saturday, April 5 beginning at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). The race will also be broadcast live on the Performance Racing Network (PRN) and Sirius Satellite Radio.

* Catch the Action … Live coverage of the Samsung 500 from Texas Motor Speedway begins Sunday, April 6 at 1:30 p.m. EDT. The event will also be broadcast live on PRN and Sirius Satellite Radio. Qualifying for the seventh event on the Sprint Cup Series 2008 tour is scheduled to take the green-flag on Friday, April 4 at 4:30 p.m. EDT and will be telecast live on SPEED. PRN and Sirius Satellite Radio will provide live qualifying updates.

CLINT BOWYER QUOTES

Other than a fifth-place finish a couple of years ago, Texas seems to have been a tough nut for you crack.

“We’ve run well at Texas. We run well every time we go there but, for some reason, we’ve had a lot of bad luck at Texas. Last fall, during the Chase, we were running in the top five and had a wheel come loose and ended up two laps down. Things haven’t gone quite our way down there in the Lone Star State but I enjoy the race track. We did a tire test for Goodyear down there so, hopefully, we’ll be ahead of the game.”

• Does the tire test give you any type of advantage?

“I think so. We’ve been on the tire that we’re going to run and actually helped pick it out. It’s a little extra practice that everyone else didn’t get.”

• Do you see a different race this time with the new car and the wing?

“Maybe a little bit. I think the race will be a lot like what we saw at California and Las Vegas. There are going to be cars that separate themselves from the rest of field and a lot of cars that will run the exact same speeds.”

• Can you see yourself wearing a cowboy hat and sporting a six-shooter?

“I’ve been to Victory Lane at Texas so we’ve got the cowboy hat figured out but I don’t have the six-shooter so, hopefully, we can get that done sometime soon.”