Tropicana Twister 300 - Travis Geisler Notes

Travis Geisler Notes, Quotes: Tropicana Twister 300
Adjusting by knowledge of what makes race cars tick

This weekend Travis Geisler and the #36 National City Chevrolet team head to 1.5-mile Chicagoland Speedway near Joliet, Ill., for Saturday’s Chicago 200 NASCAR Busch Series race.

The trip will be the first for the Pennsylvania native to the speedway but the young driver is known as one who can quickly adjust to new tracks. This will be his sixth start for DCT Motorsports, which fields the National City Chevrolet.

DCT Motorsports’ owners John McGill and Carl Natale – the first full-time owners from the Cleveland, Ohio, area NASCAR’s top three divisions have ever seen – have developed the sport’s most cost-efficient, sponsor-friendly marketing setup. It is based on giving full value to sponsors, and utilizing the many business-to-business contacts McGill, a developer, and Natale, a major earthwork contractor, have in place. Ricky Pearson, a top veteran mechanic and leader who has won the NASCAR Busch Series championship as well, is the team’s crew chief.

DCT Motorsports, seeking sponsorship for next year and the remainder of this season, is in the midst of a 25-race schedule for 2004, hitting all of the major NASCAR Busch Series events and markets. One of the most comprehensive sponsorship packages in any form of motorsports, DCT offers a complete package of top racing equipment, hospitality, public relations, publicity, appearances and show cars..

The thoughts of National City Chevrolet driver Travis Geisler heading into Chicagoland:

“Going to a track for the first time just isn’t that big of a deal to me. The series I’ve raced in, you have to be able to adjust pretty quickly. There isn’t time to learn this or try that. You just do whatever it takes to get the car as fast as it will go, and you take it from there.

“Experience is a great thing if you have it, so that does help the guys who have driven Chicago before. But you have to keep in mind the Busch Series hasn’t been racing Chicagoland that long and there haven’t been that many races there, so nobody has a tremendous amount of experience at the track. It still all boils down to knowing the track and knowing the fast way around it, whether you learned that five years ago or five minutes ago.

“When you look at the great drivers of the past, or of today, adjusting to a race track over the period of five or six years just didn’t happen. They might not be perfect the first lap around a new track or even the first race but you could pretty well depend on them to find their way to the front and find the best way to get around it. That style might change a little bit the second time they go there or the third, but they knew what it took to go fast and to beat everyone else.

“That kind of tradition – that kind of driver – is the type I try to emulate. The things that worked for drivers like Dale Earnhardt or Rusty Wallace or Mark Martin are things I know will work for me too. Part of my duties at DCT Motorsports is working on the race cars and working on this National City Chevrolet. I am in the shop every day helping work on the cars. Part of it is that is simply the way I am – I love race cars and want to work with them all of the time. But part of it, too, is knowing that I need to learn everything I can about these cars if I am going to be the best driver I can be.

“The knowledge (crew chief) Ricky Pearson brings to the table is phenomenal, and I feel fortunate to be in a position to share that. Knowing what the car is doing on the race track is obviously important. Being able to communicate that back to the crew is even more important. But having worked on the car, learned what does what and what makes the car work – from the smallest bolt to the engine itself – can give a driver an extra advantage. That type of knowledge helped make some of the great drivers great – and that’s the type of knowledge I am looking to gain by working on the car every day in the shop and every day at the track.

“We’re taking this National City Chevrolet into Chicagoland looking for a great weekend. We feel we can adjust quickly and do some pretty neat things Saturday afternoon.”