Clint Bowyer visited Disney World near Orlando Florida for a couple of days this past week. He wasn’t there on vacation however. Bowyer and his new crew chief Brian Pattie spent a few days testing at the Walt Disney World Speedway for Michael Waltrip Racing.
Both Bowyer and Pattie joined the team and will campaign a Toyota in 2012. The trip to the ¾ mile triangle shaped speedway gave the driver and crew chief an opportunity to get a head start on the season.
Bowyer signed with MWR late in 2011 after spending the past few season with Richard Childress Racing. He said the testing was more of a team building exercise and less of a change to learn anything technical.
“Right off the bat, everybody just kind of fell into place," Bowyer told NASCAR.com. "I'm telling you, you will learn as much sitting down at a table to dinner and talking racing, getting to know each other and bench racing a little bit -- building that trust and respect within one another, this early in the game -- as you will at the race track, going through the motions and changing shocks and springs.
"We were way behind on that, time-wise, but it's been a lot of fun to get to know each other and that's why we're down here."
The Walt Disney World Speedway is actually located in the parking lot of Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Once a regular stop on the Truck Series and CART open wheel series, the speedway is used by the Richard Petty Driving Experience for most of the year. Disney once resisted allowing testing there but in the last few years eased the restrictions and several NASCAR teams have tested there recently including MWR and JR Motorsports.
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