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Clint Bowyer, rested and ready, looks forward to putting his career back in gear

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—The voice was familiar. The grin was, too. It’s just the finishing position that was strange.

Clint Bowyer walked into the media center after a second-place finish in the second of Thursday night’s two Can-Am Duels and smiled. “Been a long time since I’ve been in here,” he said, then picked up a placard in front of him. “Look at that! Got my name on it and everything.”

Bowyer’s wide-eyed enthusiasm is understandable, given that he’s spent the last 18 months in career limbo. One peculiar aspect of NASCAR’s have-and-have-not environment is the fact that there are more good drivers than there are cars in which to place them. So when Bowyer’s old team, Michael Waltrip Racing, announced in 2015 it would be closing its doors, that left Bowyer – once a reliable top-10 driver and a former Cup championship runner-up – without a ride available at a top-flight team.

HScott Motorsports stepped up, as best it could, giving Bowyer a seat while everyone waited for Tony Stewart to retire. But Bowyer effectively threw away an entire year of his career in equipment that couldn’t come close to keeping up with the cars of his more well-funded colleagues.

“Obviously, everybody’s goals are to go out and win, but there are only a select few organizations that truly are set up to know, no matter what the cost or expense or amount of dedication, that’s what they’re there to do and the word no is non-existent,” Bowyer said. “It’s, ‘what do we have to do to win?’”

There’s absolutely no gentle way to put this: Bowyer’s 2016 was an absolute horror, a roadkill-spread-along-a-mile-of-highway-level nightmare. He notched zero wins, zero top-fives, and top tens at only three tracks: Talladega (7th), Bristol (8th), and Daytona (9th). He led only three more laps last year than you did. Given the random nature of finishes at Dega and Daytona, it’s possible that an 8th-place finish at Bristol is all that qualifies as a highlight for Bowyer’s 2016.

But dig a little deeper. Bowyer had the greatest positive differential between average starting position (30.7) and average finishing position (23.6) of any driver on the track. That means he was overdriving weak equipment, wringing as good a performance as possible out of cars not meant to go that fast. (For comparison’s sake, seven drivers had average starting positions in the top 10, led by Denny Hamlin’s 6.3.)

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In Stewart-Haas Racing, Bowyer slides into an operation with five recent championships: three by owner Tony Stewart and one apiece by Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch. There’s also a new alliance with Ford, which surely wants to throw plenty of engineering expertise and cash at one of NASCAR’s premier teams. And there’s one hungry-as-hell driver ready to reclaim a position in the spotlight and snag at least one more win. That’s a formidable combination.

“The last year-and-a-half has been miserable,” Bowyer said. “That isn’t how I want my kid to remember me. He’s two-and-a-half years old now and I want to be able for him to see me in Victory Lane and for him to be in Victory Lane and when it’s all said and done you look over when you’re 50-some years old that there’s a picture of your whole family in Victory Lane. That’s what I race for.”

Clint Bowyer (Getty Images)
Clint Bowyer (Getty Images)

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.