Bowyer relishing 'big team' return

After a tumultuous "gap year" at HScott Motorsports, Bowyer's promised ride with Stewart-Haas for 2017 has come to fruition. Las Vegas marked the 400th career start for the native of Emporia, Kansas, and provided a convenient jumping off point on where Clint Bowyer has been, where he is now, and where he hopes to go in the future.

Las Vegas marked your 400th career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup start. Is racing at this level still as fun as it was in the beginning?
This year, in talking about my 400th start, it is fun. Everything is back. The hunger, the excitement and just the eagerness to get back to the racetrack are all back. All those things that I had when I first started here are back. I literally just couldn't wait to get back to the racetrack to do better and to fix one little hiccup I had wrong to get that next crack at bat. That's what's back and it's cool it came at this part of my career.

After 400 starts I get a new opportunity with Stewart-Hass Racing and a new team and a new manufacturer and new sponsors and new teammates. All this stuff that's new has really put new life back into me.

To climb into that number 14 car and be involved with an A-plus team, it had been a little while, hadn't it?
Absolutely! It's been a few years there where it's just been disappointment after disappointment. Obviously, there were things that I had to do to make sure that I got lined back up to get back with the right equipment, with the right car, with the right teammates and the right recipe to win these races and compete for championships. I wanted to make sure before it was all said and done, no matter how long it took or what, I wasn't going to end my career like that. I wanted to make sure that I ended with the right opportunity to showcase one last time that I had it.

To be honest with you, that's all I could think about. You're trying to get your kid in Victory Llane and you don't want them to grow up reading all these articles saying you were good at your profession and he never got to see it. I want him to be old enough to remember that and to see it and feel it before I ever think about quitting.

So racing for the HScott Motorsports team last year was something akin to wearing velvet handcuffs?
It was tough on a lot of different fronts, but again, it's what you have to do. I had to stay on the racetrack and to try and stay relevant. I was waiting a year, you know for this Stewart-Haas ride, but it was worth it. I knew that going in and was well aware of the possibilities and what may or may not be, but unfortunately it just wasn't quite as good as I had hoped. It was the risk that I was willing to take to make sure that I was lined up with this organization and this team so I could be where I wanted to be right here at this point in my career.

You have to have the resources to be able to go out and compete at this level and Gene Haas and Tony Stewart and all of our partners are just lined up to do that. I mean you just don't talk about, "Well, can we afford that or not?" The only thing you talk about is, "What do we need to go faster? Do not waste money, but what can we do to make those cars go faster?" It's just a great situation to be in.

Maybe being away from a top-shelf team for a year was an "absence makes the heart grow fonder" sort of situation?
Oh yeah. That's what's hard, you know? Just looking back on my career, there has just been a lot of ups and downs. I've never been a Steady Eddy, "Let's just ride right here." Some of those things were my doing, some of them, as I can look back, could have been losing a crew chief or having a crew chief change. That's the captain of the ship, you know? When you have a different captain, sometimes that doesn't work out quite like you had maybe anticipated it to.

Then I had organizations that went to through the best part of my career and then all of a sudden opted out and left me empty-handed and it's like, "Here's a handful of partners and what do we do?" So we signed this thing over here and waited another year. That was the biggest disappointment for me. I had a lot of people that stuck their necks out and knew the situation and thought enough of me that they hung around and kept on board and made it possible for me to get on the racetrack and I couldn't deliver it to him. That, for me, was the hardest thing for me to handle. I can take letdowns myself, but I'm not very good at letting people down and that's what really, really bothered me.

How was it working with Tony Stewart in getting over here to this team and getting in his racecar?

Tony, to me, and this is just me talking and what I think, he just got to this part in his life and in his career where he was happy and he was satisfied and he just didn't want to do it anymore. He was tired of the grind. A lot of things have changed in this sport. It's just not the same as it used to be. Not saying those are for the worst. It's just a lot different than his heyday and the better part of his career.

Is it the commercial stuff, all the stuff you guys have to go through before you even get into the car?
You know, that's it and I don't mind that, but a guy like Tony does. Everybody is built a little differently. Things bother people differently than others. But aside from that, you're selling the sport you love. That's not that bad. It's the grind of, literally, not having a weekend off. Even on our off weekends, you're doing something in racing. You're not in touch with reality of normal life.

But at the end of the day, you put up with all of it to be able to race the car, huh?
Yeah, absolutely. I love coming to the track. And again, last year I got to the point where I didn't. That was the point in me where I told my wife, "I literally don't want to go to the racetrack. This is the first time in my whole life I remember not wanting to go. I'd rather just stay here and hang out and go watch my nephew's baseball game or do something else.

This is weird. This is uncharted territory for me. I look forward to Mondays. It's all relative to success. When you're having fun and you're on your game and the guys around you are on their game and their having fun, the engine works. And that's when you're just so pumped back to the racetrack. That's where I'm at now. After 11 years of doing this, I'm probably as excited and eager to get to the track than I've ever been.

And to get back to your winning ways? If I have it right, the last time you won was at Charlotte in 2012.
Yeah, I got new reasons to be in victory lane. My kid, I'm telling you, I want a picture of him in Victory Lane.

How old is he?
Two.

So you want a photo of you and your son Cash next to the trophy?
Oh yeah. That's the only thing that's changed now in my life that I can't show him. You have to do that to where he realizes that and can be a part of that history that's his history when he gets older.

What's your take on some of the recent change in NASCAR? Are you cool with the new stages?
I like the change. I think you've got to be careful. It scares me when they start selling things. I like all the changes they've have done, but it scares me when they're selling them because I don't know that you can ever deliver to the expectations of when you bring something in new. It might do exactly what you needed it to do, but in a fan's eyes, or if you sold it at a level of expectation that they don't see I meets, it'll be dubbed a failure.

I think these stages are ultra-crucial and needed. They've been needed for a long time. They break up that long lull of lung runs that nobody likes – including us. It gives a father with his kids in the stands time for a bathroom break or a drink break. TV can strategize around it and I think a fan can as well. I think that's been needed a long time and I'm really happy that they used the points deal to try and sell that. I'm telling you, that's all going to ratchet up as we get into the summer months and we get down to leading into that playoff system. That's when it's really going to be apparent just how important those points were.

What do you think about the West Coast swing?
It is tough out here. This is a hard part of our schedule. It's just bam, bam, bam, bam. Then you get home and get calmed down and reset. You reestablish your goals. That is the good thing about this West Coast swing: You've got a mile and a half, you've got a short track and you've got a big old wore-out track out in Fontana. You get a good gauge of where you are at equipment-wise, team-wise and everything else. You can do these races and then get home and reestablish your goals before Martinsville.