SONOMA, Calif. -- Clint Bowyer finished Sunday with a beat-up race car and a smile. For a guy who hasn't seen Victory Lane in more than four years, he could settle for second at Sonoma Raceway.
Contact with AJ Allmendinger, Brad Keselowski and others couldn't keep Bowyer from the solid finish. He took a mangled car with a lot of tape holding it together and rallied from the rear of the field over the the second half of the race.
"[Allmendinger] down there, I just didn't see him and knocked the whole front end off our car," Bowyer said. "Somebody else, I had a really good run on, and I thought they were going to give it to me, and they didn't. Brad spun me out. So ... one of them days."
Bowyer took advantage of having a 46-lap green-flag run until the final lap of the race to weave through the field.
"Let's face it, short runs have never been my strong suit here," Bowyer said about competing on the 1.99-mile road course. "The long runs are [my strength], and thank God we got a long run there.
"I was out of tires. By the time I got done tearing the hell out of my car, I was out of tires."
Bowyer sits 11th in the points and 16th in the playoff standings, the last spot currently available on points. He is four points ahead of Matt Kenseth, who is also winless.
Seeing teammate Kevin Harvick win was good in the sense that Harvick has had such a good season, he's not taking a playoff spot that Bowyer hadn't already figured would be taken.
"It's not like I was looking at that team as one I was going to have to point my way into beating for the [playoffs]," Bowyer said.
Some of his competitors probably didn't think that Bowyer would be someone they would have to battle to make the playoffs. Bowyer had struggled the previous couple of years -- he has a 165-race winless streak -- and the team had a good but not stellar season in 2016 with Tony Stewart behind the wheel.
Second-year crew chief Mike Bugarewicz has grown into the role, Stewart said.
"Your first year as a crew chief, it's got to be nerve‑wracking," Stewart said. "You're going and making decisions at these facilities for the first time, and I think to get a year under your belt and to have your own notes and to be able to go to these the second time around is a big advantage.
"Part of it is it's a little bit of taking a step backwards when you're switching drivers like that, but at the same time, I think it's got to give the crew chief a lot of confidence in his second year."
On the brink of the playoffs, Bowyer isn't thinking that he can rely on getting in on points.
"We've got to win," he said. "We need a win in a big way, and today would have been a great win, But after everything that happened, to get second place is, I guess, really good, as a matter of fact."
Xfinity Series: Big Win For Byron
Williams Byron earned the first career win that he was close to securing a couple times earlier this year, as he triumphed in Iowa.
The Hendrick Motorsports development driver, competing for JR Motorsports in the Xfinity Series this year, only has five years of experience in stock cars, and many view him as having considerable potential. He is third in the standings and now has that win after just 14 starts.
In his 13th start, he nearly won, losing by inches to Cup driver Denny Hamlin a week earlier at Michigan.
"Just to be that close gave us a lot of momentum going into this week, and our short-track program has been really good, [but] ... to get second last week kind of hurt because we were that close," Byron said. "I think it gave us extra motivation."
Camping World Truck Series: Go Slow To Go Fast?
John Hunter Nemechek captured back-to-back wins as he won Friday at Iowa Speedway, six days after winning at Gateway Motorsports Park.
Even with the two wins, Nemechek is only eighth in the standings.
"The last couple of weeks I've been driving a little bit smarter races where I haven't quite been conservative, but I haven't been as aggressive in the early going -- just waited until the end, and I think that's paid off huge," Nemechek said.
With difficulty finding sponsorship, Nemechek said that he is trying not to make mistakes under the pressure of trying to perform.
"I wouldn't say that I'm driving like there's all-or-nothing on the table or driving conservative. ... We've had fast trucks every week we've unloaded," Nemechek said. "Some mistakes have been on my part."