NASCAR Cup

Bristol: Kvapil - Friday media visit

Travis Kvapil, driver of the No. 28 Yates Racing Ford Fusion, is sporting an 11 Million paint scheme this weekend in reference to the estimated number of people who watch NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races on television every weekend. Kvapil, whose ...

Edited: Mar 15, 2008, 2:11 AM

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Travis Kvapil, driver of the No. 28 Yates Racing Ford Fusion, is sporting an 11 Million paint scheme this weekend in reference to the estimated number of people who watch NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races on television every weekend. Kvapil, whose team is still seeking a full-time sponsor, spoke about the concept and his hopes for Sunday.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR PAINT SCHEME? "We had the idea to put 11 million on the hood of the car and what we're trying to represent and illustrate is the average number of viewers watching the races the first part of the season on Fox and with that they're watching the 28 car go around without a primary sponsor on it, so I guess what we're trying to show is there's an opportunity. There's obviously a lot of people watching the race, and that's how we're trying to illustrate our situation."

AND YOU'RE DRIVING A FAMOUS NUMBER IN THE 28, SO IT'S NOT JUST ANOTHER CAR, RIGHT? "Yates Racing and the 28 number definitely had a glorious history and has a well-known spot in this sport. The heritage with the 28 number is pretty legendary. There's been a lot of great drivers that have won races and contended for championships with that number. For me, when I think of the 28 I think of Davey Allison and the great career he had at Yates and the number of races he won. It's special to be able to bring that back and get it out here. It's kind of a shame that we don't have a company associated with it, but we're trying to get across that there's an opportunity here. NASCAR is the most viewed sport on television right now and we're just trying to demonstrate that message."

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR TEAM'S EFFORT SO FAR? "Yeah. You never know how you're going to come out of Daytona and we just got banged up there at the end. The next two weeks we had cars that were top 10 cars. We had some trouble at California and we weren't able to do that, but we put the whole package together at Las Vegas and had a nice, solid eighth-place finish. Atlanta was just a big struggle for our team. We never felt comfortable with the car from the time we unloaded it and I know we weren't the only ones. It seemed like there were about five or six teams that really hit on it and everyone else was struggling pretty bad, so I'm very confident in our team and our races cars and our equipment. Our alliance with Roush Fenway has given us top-notch equipment, so we know we can go out there and compete. In our third race together we showed we were a top-10 caliber car and I really think we're just building on that. We're still learning how this new company is gonna work. I've only had four races with Todd as my crew chief, so we're only gonna get better and we're only gonna get stronger. I'm really looking forward to the rest of the season and I truly do think we can be a contender for race victories."

IS IT FRUSTRATING TO BE IN YOUR POSITION, HOWEVER, AND HAVE VARIABLES OUT OF YOUR CONTROL LIKE AT BRISTOL AND MARTINSVILLE? "I've thought about it a lot and you really just have to go out there and race. I guess the biggest thing is you can't really be conservative because it's hard to be conservative at these fast, little race tracks. You've got to go out there and race hard and, hopefully, run up front. Obviously, you can get caught up in wreck anywhere you're at on the track, but if you're toward the front, that's gonna give you the best opportunity to have a good, clean day. I'm really looking forward to these next two weeks of short-track racing. It is gonna be a challenge and the biggest thing we're gonna fight is coming out of here unscathed and not getting caught up in a wreck. But I have confidence that our cars will have speed in them and we'll be fast. Hopefully, we can just keep it up in the top part of the field and that will help us stay out of trouble."

-credit: ford racing

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