Remembering Clint Bowyer’s highlight sprint at Jeff Gordon

By Bob PockrassFOX Sports NASCAR Writer

When it comes to racing, most NASCAR drivers generate highlights on four wheels.

But some have had memorable moments at the track motoring on two feet.

Carl Edwards, after a wreck at Talladega in 2009, ran to the finish line a la Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights. 

Brendan Gaughan ran to his car after a wreck in 2016 at Kansas so he could get back in and gain some points.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brad Keselowski had a memorable race to the portable bathroom during a red flag in 2012. 

But the best sprint on two feet came later in the 2012 season at Phoenix.

The driver? Not one you’d expect, at least not at the time.

It was Clint Bowyer.

Having just seen his slim championship hopes ruined, thanks to the front bumper of Jeff Gordon, a mad Bowyer climbed out of his wrecked race car on pit road and looked up at the video board.

He saw his crew having at it with Gordon’s crew at Gordon’s hauler. That was enough to put Bowyer into a full sprint.

Who would have thought Bowyer would sprint to try to throw some haymakers at Gordon?

Granted, they had their moments earlier in the year, especially in April at Martinsville, where Gordon and Bowyer had contact as part of a green-white-checkered finish, costing both Gordon and his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson a chance at victory. 

In the Phoenix race, they had contact again, cutting down a tire for Gordon, who fell a couple of laps down. Gordon, with his wounded car, decided to take care of business.

In other words, take care of Bowyer.

Sure enough, Gordon waited on Bowyer and turned him into the wall, ending both their days, as well as that of Joey Logano.

As Gordon got out of his mangled car at his hauler, Bowyer’s crew tried to get to him, but he was quickly hustled out of harm’s way. The crews continued to push and shove amid the mayhem.

The crews converged again as Bowyer was stopped by a NASCAR official at the entrance of the Gordon hauler. Things were heated enough that a cop saw a crew member reach for a tire and told the crew member he would be arrested on the spot if he picked it up. 

While the crews were separated, the drivers visited the NASCAR hauler, the office where officials often spend time prior to and after a race. It didn’t change their perspective.

“It’s pretty embarrassing for a four-time champion and what I consider one of the best the sport has ever seen to act like that,” Bowyer said afterward. “It’s just completely ridiculous.” 

Gordon made no apologies. 

“It’s just things have gotten escalated over the year, and I’ve just had it,” Gordon said. “Clint’s run into me numerous times, wrecked me, and he got into me on the back straightaway and pretty much ruined our day. I’ve had it and was fed up with it and got him back.”

It was one of the rare times that Gordon was called out as a driver.

“What offends me is the double standard that I spent a whole week being bashed by a half-dozen drivers about racing hard at Texas and how I’m out of control and have a death wish, and then I see [expletive] like that,” Keselowski said. “These guys just tried to kill each other.

“You race hard, and I get called an asshole for racing hard and called with a death wish, and I see [expletive] like that and it just pisses me off. It’s just [expletive] ridiculous, and they should be ashamed.”

Truthfully, Gordon should be glad Bowyer made that infamous sprint because the incident is a little bit of a stain on Gordon’s legacy, and the funny part of Bowyer’s run is more etched in people’s memories than the on-track incident itself.

“I feel like Clint needed to be dealt with, but that wasn’t the right way to go about it,” Gordon said five days later.

Gordon had the support of his team owner, Rick Hendrick. Remember that contact in Martinsville? That was an afternoon when the team hoped to earn its 200th victory. Martinsville holds the greatest and saddest time in Hendrick’s heart, as it’s the track where Hendrick would go to races as a kid as well as the site of his team’s first victory.

But it was also the place where, back in 2004, a Hendrick plane crashed en route to the race, killing 10 people, including Hendrick’s son, his brother and his brother’s two children.

“We were all wanting to win more than anything, to get our 200th win at Martinsville meant so much because we lost so much there,” Hendrick said five days after the fight. “And that was taken away from us. It took me a week or so to get over it just because we had that in our grasp. That was emotions we carried and nobody else.”

Emotions.

NASCAR fans love to see them. And Gordon’s actions displayed an inherent philosophy in NASCAR. There is a little bit of cowboy justice that is acceptable, like a beanball that gets a pitcher suspended. A driver can’t get pushed around and must defend himself or herself, even if it means suffering whatever punishment NASCAR delivers.

NASCAR fined Gordon $100,000 and docked him 25 points. 

Obviously, Gordon and Bowyer made up. You can see them weekly in the FOX Sports booth having fun calling NASCAR races and calling each other out from time to time. They even tore up some rental cars racing each other on the Daytona road course.

But the story of how they made up is one for the ages. They spent at least a few moments on New Year’s Eve together less than two months after Phoenix. On rapper P. Diddy’s yacht.

Bowyer and Kevin Harvick ended up on the yacht as guests of chef Guy Fieri. Gordon and his wife, Ingrid Vandebosch, got invited to the party – because they’re Jeff Gordon, champion race-car driver, and Ingrid Vandebosch, notable model.

With some help of liquid fuel, they at least talked. Their icy relationship began to thaw.

Look at them now. They can’t stop laughing in the FOX booth, where they have embraced that moment as part of their history. You have probably seen the highlight of Bowyer running and the fight once or twice or a hundred times. Be prepared to see it again. 

It’s a highlight for the ages. It’s NASCAR, and in NASCAR, a good highlight mixed with a good fight is never forgotten and never goes to waste.

It won’t go down as their greatest moment. But better to enjoy the journey than run and hide.

Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass.

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