You’d figure things are hectic for Clint Bowyer every time he returns to his home track of Kansas Speedway.
However, this week has been even more hectic than usual thanks to the birth of he and wife Lorra’s new son, Cash, on Wednesday.
But while Bowyer may be a bit sapped of energy (at least enough to take the box of 5-Hour Energy placed in front of him at the start of his press conference), he still regaled reporters with an energetic retelling of the event.
“I’m so happy and proud – what a wild experience,” the driver of the No. 15 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota said. “Friends, family, peers – everybody – is trying to warn you: ‘Oh, it’s gonna change your life.’ And you’re like, ‘There’s no way.’ And then all of a sudden, that little gremlin comes out of there and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is real.’
“I was probably not the norm as far as [being a] spectator in an event like that. In the room there, I was high-fiving people. I was kind of pushing the doctor out of the way at one point trying to get a better view of him coming into the world and of course, the nurses are trying to hold me back: ‘You can’t get that close!’ I’m like, ‘Get the hell out of my way, here he comes!’
“It was a lot of fun. We were all laughing.”
Bowyer then noted the lack of sleep later that night thanks to Cash’s crying – and for another reason as well.
“The nurses tend to come in to do paperwork at 3 o’clock in the morning, which really comes in handy,” he said. “They want to ask you about your education and things like that, and you’re like, ‘Lady, can we wait ’til daylight, maybe? That would be a good goal?’
“3 o’clock in the morning is not a good time to be talking to me with [Cash] screaming, [Lorra mad], and now I am [mad]. So yeah, it’s been a wild deal.”
Later on, he quipped that the name of Cash was a reference to “the cash he’s gonna cost me over the years when he gets to racing cars” before mentioning that he’d try to get a guitar or a golf club in his hand when he’s old enough.
However, Bowyer also wondered what it’d be like to one day have his kid perhaps going wheel-to-wheel on the track with the offspring of some of his current rivals.
“It’ll be fun to watch how this all unravels, because a lot of us racers right now have kids pretty well within a five-year radius of all this,” he said. “So, we’re gonna be back battling each other for the rest of our lives…
“…I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a T-ball game or a soccer game with the parents? That’s when it gets out of control and I can just see us yelling and screaming at each other, still fighting when we’re 60, 70 years old and our kids are racing – just like our dads did.”