by Fr. Dale Grubba – March 31, 2009
For Janesville’s Travis Kvapil the economic downturn could not have picked a worse time to happen. After being with Roger Penske and then Cal Wells, Kvapil was looking for a way to get back to the Sprint Cup level of racing.

He knew that he had to get hooked up with a multi-car team that had both resources and funding. “Unfortunately when I was driving for Cal Wells in 2006 we didn’t have any of that. We were a single car effort with very limited funds. Manufacturer support was minimal. It was tough to go out and make races and perform.

“In my mind…. Man, I want to be a Cup driver for the long haul. I knew I had to align myself with one of the bigger teams. That’s really why when Jack (Roush) came to me and asked me to drive truck for him it was an opportunity I jumped at. I knew I could go out and win races and do a good job for him. For me to survive for the long haul in Cup racing I needed to align myself with Roush Racing.”

Kvapil paid his dues by racing trucks and then, by a twist of fate, ended up back in Cup driving for the Yates Team, which had become closely connected to the Roush operation.

“I came in one day, “ Kvapil recalls, “to talk to some potential sponsors not really knowing what I was in for. Doug Yates was sitting in the room with Jack Roush and the higher ups at Roush Fenway Racing. They laid out what was happening and it really took me by surprise. I didn’t have any idea what 2008 was going to hold for myself, what path I was going to go down. The timing worked out. Ricky Rudd was retiring so they needed someone to step up. I was the driver Jack Roush and Doug Yates had confidence in. It was really just a good fit.

“I almost really didn’t expect another chance. I drove for two Cup teams before. We did not perform. Thankfully Jack Roush still believed in me and gave me the opportunity to go out and reprove myself.

“ In my mind I feel like this is my last chance,” Kvapil said at the start of the 2008 season. “I don’t think there are any opportunities better than this, driving for a team in the top 35, competitive equipment, and a very established crew chief that has had a lot of success and won races. This is where I need to step up and get it done, really focus on the task at hand.”

Kvapil did that. Midway through the 2008 season he was hovering around the top twenty cars in the points with hopes of breaking into the top fifteen. Then there was a midseason slump. “We weren’t doing anything different,” Kvapil says. “I honestly feel like some of the other teams caught up a little bit. I felt like our program was really strong to start the year off. Then we didn’t test at Nashville, Kentucky, Milwaukee, or any places we could have tested. The other teams did and it gave them the opportunity to catch up. They got their cars figured out. We had the same thing as we did at the get go. It goes back to sponsorship and having money in the budget to do all these things. We weren’t in that situation.

“Overall we did ok. We were twenty-third in the points. We needed to run better. We had some good runs mixed in. Talladega was definitely the high point. We won the pole, ran up front, and led some laps. We finished the season off with a seventh place finish at Homestead. It’s always nice to end the year with a good finish.”

Asked at the start of the 2009 season what lay ahead Kvapil admitted it was really up in the air. He was scheduled to drive five races and hopefully by that time a sponsor would come on board. “At the end of the day,” Kvapil admitted, “it still comes down to sponsorship dollars. It’s discouraging because I feel like we’ve got something to build off of from last year.

“I’m under contract for the whole year with Yates Racing. Once we get to the fifth race we will deal with it, whether some other opportunities arise or we start scattering races. I’m not sure what the plan is. All I can do is go out there and drive the heck out of it and hope for the best.”

The first five races have come and gone in 2009 and Travis Kvapil was not at Martinsville. A full-time sponsor has yet to be found. It’s unfortunate because Travis Kvapil is a confident young man who believes he has a place in Cup racing.