The Long John Silver’s Ford has been creeping its way toward the top-35 in owners’ points for the past few weeks. While the team still has 12 points to go, they are optimistic they will break through in the upcoming weeks. The beginning of the season was filled with bad luck and heartbreak, but Travis Kvapil and the No. 38 team are optimistic that things are already turning for the better for the second half of the season.
The team is headed to Indianapolis (Ind.) Motor Speedway this weekend to compete at one of the most historic tracks in the country for Sunday’s Brickyard 400. For Kvapil, it’s a dream come true to be able to have the opportunity to race at Indy where so many of his heroes raced. He has four starts at the track with a career-best finish of 24th.
“I’m ready to focus on the second half of the racing year. The first half just didn’t go as anyone planned, and I really didn’t expect things to go for me as they have. You always start the season with high hopes and I felt that we had a great opportunity to run well in the Cup car. So, I think the first half of the season was a pretty big letdown for us. Obviously our performance has not been up to par, but at the same time we’ve just had miserable, bad luck. A lot of things happened to us that never happen and it just seems like it’s a bit of a black cloud following us since the beginning part of the year. We want to get out from underneath that.
“The last few races, I think we’ve seen signs with the team. Jay Guy has done a great job getting everything headed in the right direction. He has gotten his pulse on things and has started working on improving all our areas. If we can just get a little bit of the bad luck behind us, we can probably be a team that runs in the top-25 weekly. That’s what we want to build through the rest of this season.
“I feel like our cars are driving much better than they did the first five or six races of the season. I feel more comfortable and a lot more confident going into the race track than earlier in the year. We just need to carry that momentum each week. Indy is our next chance to do that together.
“Like most of us, I love the history of the track. I remember growing up watching the Indy 500 on TV and some of my heroes, Rick Mears and Danny Sullivan, some of these guys winning races there. I never imagined I would be in the Sprint Cup Series, and I never imagined I would have the opportunity to race in Indy at the same places as all of these legends have in the past. With all of that, it’s just a special place, similar to Daytona. A lot of history and a lot of legends of the sport have raced at Indy. It’s neat to be able to race on the track like all of these people have in the past.
“This is a long race and it’s a difficult race, too. Track position is so hard here. It really means everything, so we’re going to be aware of that. If we can just play some pit strategy right and be there at the end, we’ll have a chance of really making up some good ground. That will give us the momentum we want heading into August.”
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