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NASCAR Cup

Clint Bowyer: "It’s time to allow somebody else to have fun”

Transitioning from race car driver to TV broadcaster will be a big step for Clint Bowyer but it also opens the door to multiple new opportunities with which to spend his time.

Jim Utter

Edited: Oct 14, 2020, 10:49 PM

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Bowyer, 41, announced last week that he was stepping away from his fulltime driving career in the NASCAR Cup Series at the end of the season and would join the Fox Sports NASCAR broadcast team in 2021.

“Honestly, you’ll probably see a lot more of me, in general, anyway throughout the first half of the season especially – looking forward to that, got a lot of cool things, some new things we’re going to see,” Bowyer said. “The second half of the season, man, I haven’t even thought about that far.

“Obviously, we’ll still have a presence and still be working in the studio and stuff like that for Fox, ‘Race Hub’ and things like that. That’s important to me. It’s not like you just leave and clock out, but it does enable me to take my family on a weekend and, I don’t know, go figure out I guess what normal people do.

“It’s been since I was five years old I’ve been in a motorhome at a race track somewhere, so to have that opportunity to be able to take our family and do some new things. … It’s time to allow somebody else to have fun.”

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Clint Bowyer leaving SHR, to join FOX Sports booth in 2021

On Sunday, Bowyer was one of four drivers eliminated from further title contention this season following the race at the Charlotte Roval.

Bowyer still has four more Cup races this season in which to try to pick up a win this year and the next stop is at his home track at Kansas Speedway.

“It’s always fun to come back to Kansas, looking forward to it. It’s a cool track, special to me. It’s going to obviously be more special this time around and we’ll be ready for it,” Bowyer said.

“Coming off a good weekend. Wasn’t the weekend we wanted. Wasn’t the finish that I feel like we deserved. We were extremely fast last weekend, but anytime you have a weekend like that, there’s some pep in your step and an excitement level for not only me, but the rest of our team.”

Bowyer said he had already been talking about his future after racing but was still working on efforts to continue as a driver in 2021 when Fox approached him about a move to the broadcast booth.

“I guess the picture just became so much more clear after the weeks went by for me of what to do for myself once the opportunity with Fox came to the table, came to the forefront and was a reality,” he said.

“We made the right decision based on a lot of things, and I say we, obviously it’s my butt getting out of the car and doing something different that I’ve never done before, but I have a wife and kids, a brother that’s been by me through it all.

“It was TV gave me that offer and that opportunity. They’re the ones that made that decision, not me. The only thing I had to do is be smart enough to realize the opportunity that was in front of me and to capitalize on it. That’s what we did.”

Remaining a part of the sport

As much as racing has always been a part of his life, Bowyer said he knew even if he was still competing in the race car, he wanted to find a way to remain part of the sport that become such an integral part of his life.

Over the last year, working on an occasional Xfinity Series broadcast and then again during the NASCAR iRacing competition during the COVID-19 shutdown opened his eyes even more to life outside the race car.

“I love being a part of this sport. I mean, that was so important for me. I didn’t want to just retire,” he said. “If this opportunity with Fox didn’t come to the table, I was going to be in a car somewhere somehow.

“I wasn’t going to just quit and run off into the sunset because I like this sport and I wanted to find my way and a future within it, and luckily this happened.”

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