NASCAR: Victory 5 years in making, as was Clint Bowyer’s celebration at Martinsville

His car had just crossed the finish line, and yet there Clint Bowyer already was, driving backward.

OK, so that’s a slight exaggeration. Even for as dominant as Bowyer was on Monday, winning his first NASCAR Cup Series race in over five years, nobody can really drive backward.

Truth be told, it was more like this: Bowyer saw the checkered flag, crossed the finished line, and started celebrating right then, right there in the driver’s seat. His No. 14 car swerved and skidded and spun around and ... well, freaked out, just like Bowyer did.

Just like Bowyer should have.

Why? Because Bowyer had been waiting a long time for this victory – and while we’re at it, let’s just get all these damning statistics out of the way at once.

Bowyer’s previous NASCAR Cup Series victory came more than five years ago, back at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Oct. 13, 2012. That’s 1,990 days ago, after a snow delay postponed this race until Monday. More than five years, 190 races, six second-place finishes. All with nothing to show.

Oh, and one more thing about that Charlotte victory – it was Bowyer’s third victory of the 2012 season, his most in any one year. The man was at the peak of his professional career ... and then, poof. All the winning went away.

Until now.

“You start to question if you can get it done or not,” Bowyer said. “It was just time.”

But enough of the statistics, and talk of streak-snapping and drought-ending. That’s in the past now.

What matters now is how Bowyer won (dominantly) and how he celebrated (epically, at least if the beginning was any indication).

Bowyer was in contention from the onset of Monday’s race, finishing fifth in Stage 1 and second in Stage 2. But almost as soon as the third and final stage began, Bowyer burst to the front of the field. Various challengers – mainly Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch – nipped at his rear bumper, but no one could ever fully catch him.

Speaking of that rear bumper, and really Bowyer’s entire car, it was practically unscathed when it did finally cross the finish line. Bowyer led 215 laps Monday, more than he has the past four years combined, largely because nobody was ever really close to him.

Or at least it was unscathed until Bowyer’s antics after the checkered flag. Then the spinning, the twirling ... at that point, Bowyer’s car was like a drunk ballerina, as wild to watch as it was beautiful. At one point, Bowyer almost wrecked into the wall, and the next he was standing on his roof, smoke pouring out of the hood, pumping his fists with the crowd.

“Something just felt right about today,” Bowyer said. “That’s that burden that’s been haunting me for a long time. It’s finally off your back, and you can finally have confidence knowing that you’re a winner again.”

It was then that Bowyer, whose personality is practically unrivaled among the top NASCAR drivers, got his long overdue moment in the spotlight. He bowed with the checkered flag. He high-fived dozens of other crew members and drivers who congratulated him. Heck, he even signaled for a beer from the crowd (although sadly, nobody tossed one down for him).

And then, Bowyer looked down the track and saw a tiny blond-haired boy running toward him – Cash, his 3-year-old son. Bowyer stopped any partying, any celebrating, and took off like a sprinter to his boy.

He scooped Cash up into his arms and hugged him, tight. Then he handed his son the checkered flag that had so long eluded them both.

“He told me he wanted a checkered flag,” Bowyer said of his son and their conversation before the race. “I told him this morning, I was like, ‘We’ve got to get our picture in Victory Lane.’

“One thing that’s always missing is a picture with him, you know ... really it’s the one thing that I don’t have. ... You start to think about what really matters in life, and the one thing that I didn’t want him to go through life as is not to know what this was all about.”

As Bowyer finished up his post-race interviews, Cash never left his side. He waved his – yes, it’s his now – checkered flag and sat smiling on his daddy’s lap. He sucked on his fingers. And while his dad sucked down a tall boy and joked with reporters, photographers clicked pictures to capture it all.

Someone just make sure the Bowyers get a copy.

This story was originally published March 26, 2018 at 8:13 PM with the headline "NASCAR: Victory 5 years in making, as was Clint Bowyer’s celebration at Martinsville."