Travis Kvapil having hard time watching NASCAR Sprint Cup races
Yates Racing's Travis Kvapil has made 110 starts in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series during his career. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
Travis Kvapil went to Martinsville Speedway a couple of weeks ago and saw some of his friends in the NASCAR Sprint Cup garage, but it’s hard to be in the garage or even watch his fellow Cup drivers on television as his No. 28 cars sit parked at Yates Racing.
“It’s not doing me any good sitting on the couch on Sunday,” Kvapil said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Kvapil finished 23rd in the points last year on a Yates Racing team that had minimal sponsorship. He didn’t have sponsorship this year and has now found himself out of a full-time ride.
Yates Racing pledged to run the team the first five races (although Kvapil would not have any owners points from 2008 because of some internal team moves). Kvapil qualified for four events before Yates Racing suspended the team’s operations after the March event at Bristol.
“It’s just hard to not be a part of it,” Kvapil said. “I definitely want to be out there and my goal is to be to get back out there and hopefully it’s with the 28. … I’ve been spending some time at the shop, spending time with the family and the kids – it was spring break this week and I was just kind of hanging out.”
While his first goal would be to see Yates Racing revive the No. 28 car, Kvapil said he didn’t think the Yates Racing team would keep him from other opportunities.
“Obviously I want to be racing,” Kvapil said. “I don’t like sitting on the couch. I don’t like not being there, not competing. It’s really hard to watch it on Sunday just knowing that I feel like I should be out there. It has just not worked out.
“I want to race, and if there were other opportunities that came up, we’d have to look at them as they come and cross that bridge when it comes. The Yates group told me if something did come up, they wouldn’t necessarily hold me back from competing, we’d just have to work it out.”
Kvapil said he wouldn’t rule anything out, but would like to find something at the Cup level where he feels as if he still has a lot to prove. The 2003 Truck champion, Kvapil has 244 career starts in national NASCAR series, including 110 at the Cup level. He isn’t too concerned about sitting out as far as his abilities deteriorating while he is out of the seat.
“We didn’t do any testing in the offseason and we showed up at [Auto Club Speedway in] California and I felt comfortable with the car and we had good speed,” Kvapil said. “And that was just being out of the seat for a few months. [Missing] a couple of months, it wouldn’t be a real big deal.”
If Yates Racing does find sponsorship, Kvapil said the team wouldn’t need much time to get ready to get to the track.
“In a matter of two or three days we could probably be ready to go to the race track,” Kvapil said. “They took my handful of race cars and pushed them over in the corner and the hauler is all ready to go. They didn’t scavenge any parts or pieces from the 28 bunch to go to any other team. The 28 is ready to go. we’d have to hire a few people back right away, but a number of people we had on the 28 came from within the company already, so they’re there.”
