Subway 500 - Rookie Friday Quotes

RAYBESTOS® ROOKIE CONTENDER FEATURE FOR THE SUBWAY 500 NASCAR NEXTEL CUP SERIES RACE AT MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY, OCTOBER 21, 2005.

Raybestos Rookie Travis Kvapil made his NEXTEL Cup Series debut in the 2004 Subway 500 at Martinsville Speedway, posting an impressive fifth-place qualifying effort and logging a 21st-place finish.

TRAVIS KVAPIL, No. 77 KODAK/JASPER ENGINES AND TRANSMISSIONS DODGE: YOU MADE YOUR NEXTEL CUP DEBUT HERE ONE YEAR AGO. WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THAT WEEKEND? “Probably more than anything a lot of anticipation and excitement and worried about qualifying to make the event but feeling pretty confident that we would be able to do that. We tested here beforehand and felt like everything performed very well. We really had a lot of confidence that we would run pretty good but still, as tight as qualifying is here, just one little slip could get us out of the show. There was a lot of anticipation and I was excited and I was a little nervous going to roll off to qualify. That was a pretty big deal to try to make your first Cup race and I didn’t want to flop, basically. I wanted to do a good job.”

HOW MUCH PRESSURE WAS THERE ON YOU TO QUALIFY? “I don’t think from management or Penske Racing there was really any. I myself knew that it would bode well for my career if I did and everybody knew I was in pretty good equipment so I needed to get it in and make a couple good laps. If we didn’t make it, I don’t know what would have happened in the future. We ran a few more races later in the year. I put a lot of pressure on myself but as far as the team and everybody that we came with we were just kind of having fun and just trying to do the best we could.”

YOU QUALIFIED FIFTH, SO THAT MUST HAVE BEEN A BIG CONFIDENCE BOOST. “Like I said, we knew that we were pretty good. We tested here a week or two before and we never did any qualifying stuff at all. Luckily, I guess, when you’re short track racing when you change them into qualifying trim it really doesn’t do a whole lot, as it would say like a California or a mile-and-a-half. Really, it’s just that the tires have more grip for two laps and you just try to get everything that you can. The first time our we were top-10 I think and we just tried to keep making small improvements on the car and ended up with a good effort.”

WHAT WAS DIFFERENT IN THE NEXTEL CUP SERIES VERSUS THE CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES? “I guess I was a little surprised, whether it’s Penske Racing or the Cup cars in general, how good they turn. I think it might have had something to do with the lower center of gravity. The trucks are carrying around a lot of weight eight inches higher than a Cup car. I think that simple fact made it seem like the car turned really good. It was very responsive. Other than that, they really drive the same. You’ve got to take care of your brakes and it’s really hard to hook them up off the corner. I guess I was a little surprised at how much better the Cup cars seemed to turn through the corner.”

HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO QUALIFY AND RACE HERE? “You’ll see that the field is separated by only a couple of tenths of a second. A quarter of a second doesn’t sound like a lot but it could be from first to last. The biggest thing I think in the race is just to keep your nose clean and stay out of trouble, try to stay on the lead lap, try to stay in the top-20. We did that last year at the fall race and had a decent result. The spring race here we were running in the top-10 with about 50 to go and got caught up in a little skirmish and knocked the radiator out of the car and ended our day. One little mistake can put you out. Everybody is on top of each other here. It’s pretty easy to ding your car up so you’ve just got to try to keep your nose clean all day but at the same time you’ve got to go, too, especially if you’ve got a good racecar.”

DO YOU THINK OTHER DRIVERS BEAT ON YOU A LITTLE BIT MORE BECAUSE OF THE YELLOW STRIPE ON YOUR BUMPER? “Probably a little bit. If somebody was following a Mark Martin or a Rusty Wallace and was a little bit faster than them, they’d probably be a little bit more patient to lay the bumper to them than they would myself or Kyle [Busch] or any other young driver. You’ve got to be smart about that, too. If somebody is all over your rear bumper and it looks like they’re pretty aggressive, you might want to just let them go. It’s not worth the chance of getting spun out and wrecked.”