Clint Bowyer suspects he had no shot at Brad Keselowski in the closing laps of the Digital Ally 400.
But he believes he would have finished second if not for a block by Erik Jones on the final lap at Kansas Speedway on Saturday night. Bowyer was forced to lift off the throttle and it dropped him to fall to fifth.
And he was pretty mad about it, too.
"It's just what are you going to do, turn him right in front of the field and hurt him?" Bowyer said during the Fox Sports 1 post-race show. "I mean, he puts you in a bad situation and I lifted for him and it cost me three spots right there. We should have finished second. Everybody knows that. That was dumb on his part.
"I guess that’s what he wants, to wreck in front of the field. When you’ve got a run like that, you just don’t move up. I should have just wrecked him I guess … God that pissed me off."
Bowyer expressed that sentiment to Jones personally in a pit road confrontation.
Jones chalked the entire ordeal to racing with this rules package on the last lap of a race.
"I’d be mad if I was him, but it’s just racing. I’ve been blocked a lot, especially with this package and I haven’t done a lot of blocking, so you have to get aggressive and fight for every position," Jones said. "That’s all I was doing at the end of the race. We were taking the white flag and you’re going for it. It’s unfortunate. You don’t want people upset, but feelings are going to get hurt and you’ll move on and we’ll be fine next week."
Jones finished third.
Ultimately, Jones said blocking is a key to success with this package versus the low downforce configurations they used the past several seasons.
"With the low downforce package, it wasn’t really necessary to block," Jones said. "You can get some big runs with this package and it really lends to a lot of big moves and unfortunately, you’re going to have to throw big blocks to defend those at the end of the race especially. It changes a little bit."
Bowyer got the last laugh though.
"He would have been disqualified if this was the Kentucky Derby."
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