Bowyer, DIRECTV Chevy, Turn in Top 10 in Talladega

Race/Date: Aaron’s 499 – April 27, 2008 - Location: Talladega Superspeedway – Talladega, Ala. - Start Position: 41st - Finish Position: Ninth - 
Points Position: Seventh – Moved Up One Spot

TALLADEGA, Ala. – Anytime you can come away from Talladega with your car in one piece is a good thing. To come away with a top 10 is even better.

Not only did Clint Bowyer, driver of the No. 07 DIRECTV Chevrolet, complete the latter, he recorded a career-best effort at Talladega Superspeedway with a ninth-place finish in Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 at the high-speed, 2.66-mile Alabama oval.

At the same time, Bowyer extended his current streak of top-10 finishes to six and moved up one spot, to seventh, in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship point standings.

After starting deep in the field, Bowyer was content to hang back for most of the afternoon, log laps and stay out of trouble.

Caution flags were few and far in between for most of the 500-mile race with NASCAR displaying the yellow flag just three times during the first two-thirds of the event.

The only real moment of anxiety for the DIRECTV racing team came after Bowyer’s second pit stop of the race when the over-the-wall team just missed getting their blue and white machine completely full of fuel. The slight miscue forced Bowyer to pit without a drafting partner at the halfway mark but a timely caution flag, 22 laps later, allowed to Emporia, Kan., native to catch back up to the lead pack without losing a lap.

As the laps wound down, the action kicked into high-gear. With 38 laps reaming, Bowyer went to the whip and began a methodical ascent up the leaderboard. By lap 160 he was scored 11th and seventh when the first of two multi car incidents broke out with 15 laps remaining.

The DIRECTV Chevy was decisively inside its designated fuel window and, considering it took 173 laps to work up to the top 10, crew chief Gil Martin wisely ordered his driver not to pit for the rest of the day.

When the green flag waved again, 11 laps short of the scheduled distance, Bowyer’s car was seventh and glued to the bottom of the racetrack with the pack, four-wide and six cars deep in tow.

He hung tough in the top 10 for the rest of the day, avoided two more incidents including the infamous “big one” that consumed 11 cars, including his RCR teammates Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick on the final lap.

When the checkered flag waved, Bowyer was credited with ninth place and his sixth consecutive top-10 finish of the season.

Kyle Busch won the race, followed by Columbian-born driver Juan Pablo Montoya, Denny Hamlin and David Ragan. Brian Vickers closed out the top five.

Despite being collected in the last-lap incident Burton finished 12th and maintained the Sprint Cup Series points lead. Harvick was 24th and fell from fifth to sixth in points.

Next weekend, NASCAR’s senior circuit heads north up the eastern seaboard to visit what many describe as “the perfect race track” where Bowyer’s NASCAR Nationwide Series sponsor BB&T will be featured on the hood and quarter panels of the No. 07 Chevy.

Flag to flag coverage of the Crown Royal 400 from Richmond International Raceway will televised live on FOX Saturday, May 3 beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The race will be broadcast live on the Motor Racing Network and Sirius Satellite Radio. Live television coverage of qualifying for the 10th race on the 2008 schedule will take the green flag Friday, May 2 at 5:30 p.m. EDT on SPEED. MRN and Sirius Satellite Radio will provide live qualifying updates.

• CLINT BOWYER QUOTE

"We're all pretty excited about that finish for the DIRECTV Chevrolet. We hung around all day like we needed to and went racing at the end. I wish I could have stayed on the bottom at the end but someone would have wrecked me. After I crashed in the Nationwide race on Saturday, I'm excited to get out of here in one piece. To get a top-10 is even better."