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Diary of a
Champion: 2004 Archive
Travis Kvapil, 2003 NASCAR Craftsman
Truck Series Champion
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Diary of a Champion: Close, But No Cigar
Going back to Martinsville, I was excited about getting on a short track again. My Bang Racing team had definitely had some struggles in the weeks before at Las Vegas, California and Texas. We had taken our Tundra to Caraway a few days before Martinsville and felt like we had really improved on our setup for the race. Over the summer, our short track program had been really good. My team had a chance to win at IRP and won at Loudon. Some of the team’s stronger runs had been at Milwaukee and St. Louis – some of the flat tracks or smaller tracks - so I had a lot of confidence going back to Martinsville this time around. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Texas Tango
I just want to win again and enjoy that indescribable feeling you get in victory lane. It felt so good to bring home those wins and Michigan and Loudon earlier this year, and after three bad weeks in a row, I’m more than ready to get back into victory lane. Things just haven’t gone our way on pit road lately, so I’m looking forward to turning that around next week and getting us back on track with four races to go this year. Returning to Texas for the second time this season, I was confident we’d have a good run. My team had just spent two days testing at Atlanta Motor Speedway and very glad that we did. We ended up changing trucks to take to Texas and felt like we had a good handle on our new-found knowledge with our spring and shock packages. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: California Dreamin’
I got to California after a quick pit stop home in North Carolina following the Vegas race. The first stop on my agenda was to tour TRD (Toyota Racing Development) with part of my crew and finally get to meet all the hardworking people that make my job easy every weekend. It was really neat to see all of the employees behind the scenes that cheer me on and work hard on a daily basis to find each of their drivers speed. I signed a lot of posters, shook a lot of hands and enjoyed eating lunch at the facility. I was also very surprised when I was presented with a custom-made RC car just like my No. 24 Line-X truck as a thank you gift from everyone there for my first win at Michigan. (Ronda Greer Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Leaving Las Vegas
I never thought going into Vegas that my team would struggle as much as we did the entire weekend. I’ve always been pretty lucky in Vegas never having finished outside of the top-10, but I guess my luck just finally ran out. The team arrived at the speedway early Thursday morning for practice and immediately began working on my truck since it was so loose on entry. Throughout the day, we adjusted air pressure and so many things– springs, wedge, track bar - you name it, and we tried it. We didn’t really know what we were missing. But nothing seemed to work, and we couldn’t break inside the top-10 during the two hour run. With about five minutes to go, the team thought we had finally hit on something in the right direction and everyone was pretty certain I’d come out of qualifying with a decent run. But as it turns out, that didn’t happen. (TravisKvapil.com Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Beating the Odds
After my disappointing week at Richmond, I couldn’t wait to get to Loudon. I knew my Bang Racing team was going to have a good truck up there. We had had really good runs at places like Milwaukee, St. Louis and IRP and were taking a truck with a very similar set up to what we ran at those tracks. So everyone on my Line-X team was confident that we were going to have a strong run. And I had a really good feeling going into the race and was looking forward to redeeming ourselves from our poor finish the week before. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Rough Ride in Richmond
I’ve always had strong runs at Richmond, so I never expected to be sitting in the garage with a handful of laps under my belt. Richmond’s one of those weekends I’d definitely like to forget. On the bright side, I’m always excited to race in the IROC events. I got there Wednesday afternoon and tested my IROC car for a couple of hours. I had a really good time making some laps in my car and thought I’d have a good shot at running well. But when they dropped the green flag, I really struggled all night. (High Sierra Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Teamwork
There’s something to be said for teamwork in this industry and sticking together during hard times. It’s what our sport is all about. And my team showed that more than ever this year at Bristol. They never gave up from the start of the race to the very end, and because of that, we fought back and ended up with a pretty decent finish. We may not have ended up on top, but everyone was proud of the effort they put in to help me get another top-10 after it was all said and done. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Unlucky 13
Even though it was Saturday the 14th, the race might as well have taken place the day before. Nothing was going right – from the very moment the green flag was thrown. My Nashville experience wasn’t turning out to be what our team had hoped for going into the weekend. Everyone was upbeat and positive after such a successful test with Toyota a couple of weeks before and was really confident we could score another win. I guess I’m just thankful to have finished in 13th – it could’ve been a lot worse. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Short Trackin’
Short track racing is like nothing else in NASCAR. It’s what I grew up with in Wisconsin and where I found a lot of my success growing up racing. So I had very high expectations going to IRP. It’s always been one of my favorite race tracks to go to in the truck series. I’ve had three finishes in the top-five and nearly won last year. I was really excited to go back there. Short tracks had been our team’s downfall up to this weekend, and I know we finally turned that around. It was a unique situation having practice, qualifying and the race all in one day. It makes it a bit of challenge for everyone. You have to get up real early and are there late into the night racing. There’s a lot of hard work for the crew to do all in one day, but at the same time, it’s great for my crew to get in and out in one day and spend the weekend at home with their families. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Victory Lane
From the beginning, Michigan was a race that I was really optimistic going in to. A couple of weeks ago, our team went to Nashville, and we left the test pretty excited about everything that we had learned. But even with that, we decided to take on a totally different truck and set-up to Michigan than what we had planned on prior to the test. Everything that we learned from the test, we applied it for the race in Michigan. I flew into Michigan early for a media luncheon at the Victory Lane Speedway to race go-karts with some of the IRL drivers and local media. During the luncheon, I had a chance to talk to the media and many of the IRL drivers which was a lot of fun. After the media luncheon, Alex Meshkin, Mike Skinner and I flew to Grand Rapids and did an appearance at a local Toyota dealership. There were a lot of people there to see us and all of the people did a great job promoting the event. There were a number of people there to get autographs, and everyone enjoyed the trip a lot. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Midwest Madness
I was really excited about going to Gateway, since I have a lot of laps under my belt from running there in what was the NASCAR Re/Max Challenge Series. It's one of my favorite tracks on the truck series schedule. I always ran really well at the track in late model cars, too, so I knew what feel I needed to have in the No. 24 when I got to the speedway. And I knew I was taking a great truck to the track, the same one I ran at Milwaukee, so I had a good feeling going into the weekend. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Kentucky Bluegrass
The week before the Kentucky race, I was still in Milwaukee spending time with my family for July 4 enjoying the home town parade, the fireworks and all of the fun surrounding the holiday. I flew out for the race weekend on Thursday morning to visit TMMK (Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky) in Georgetown. Our team had a show truck at the plant and Mike and I were given the opportunity to take a tour to see how Toyota builds the Solara, the Avalon and the Camry. It was pretty neat to see the manufacturing process. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: It's Gettin' Hot in Here
I think everyone started talking about the Kansas heat in Daytona this year. Going to that track is like a Catch-22. Everyone hates the heat but looks forward to seeing so many dedicated fans braving the weather. It's always one of the best turnouts of the year. But as usual, the most heat came from the competition on the track - and another unlikely spot - the seat of my pants. It was anything but hot on Friday when the team woke up to grey skies and rain over the speedway. During the rain delay, our teams waited out the weather in the haulers hoping for a chance to get some practice in and qualify since everyone was excited about the trucks we brought to Kansas. Our truck had performed really well at a recent Chicago test, and I was confident about my chances at getting my first pole of the season... (Ronda Greer Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Home Sweet Home
I was probably about seven or eight the first time I went to The Milwaukee Mile. Before that, I was always used to watching ¼-mile and ½-mile races, and when I went to Milwaukee for the first time, it was such a different experience. I remember watching Dick Trickle, Jim Sauter, Tom Refner and Joe Shear running in the ASA Series. It was exciting and definitely influenced my wanting to be a driver watching legends like that compete against each other. Before that, I had only been to ¼-mile tracks like Rockford, Columbus and Jefferson, and Milwaukee was really cool because I got to see what racing was like on a larger track. It opened my eyes and helped me to realize there was a lot more out there than the small tracks I was used to. So it’s always fun coming home to race in front of friends and family at the same place I used to visit as a kid. I always look forward to coming back to The Mile every year.
Diary of a Champion: Suspicious Minds
I'm not really a superstitious person, but the one thing that I do take seriously at the track are nuts, especially peanuts. I don't know when that racing superstition got started, but every time I've had peanuts around me at the track, really bad things have happened. So I should've known when a basket was delivered to the track that had nuts in it, my weekend wasn't going to go well. My PR girl was going through the basket handing everything to me, and when I saw them I threw them back at her and kind of freaked out and made sure that they were immediately thrown in the trash outside the hauler. And that was just one of many incidents that happened in Texas. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: Conquering the Monster
My team owner, Alex Meshkin, celebrated his 24th birthday on Wednesday when we left for Dover. So the team was in an upbeat mood on the plane ride up and got a good laugh when the pilot wished him a happy birthday and the flight attendants sang 'Happy Birthday' in Spanish. I must admit, it's interesting having a team owner that's four years younger than me. But it's pretty cool, because we always have a good time out on the road. He's just one of the guys. In Dover, the team went to a seafood restaurant to celebrate his birthday. Being that he's from Maryland, he talked a couple of people into ordering whole crabs. I stuck with my filet and sat through the majority of the dinner laughing at them chiseling away for a tiny piece of meat. I guess I just like to eat the same way I drive. Throttle down. (Rhonda Greer Photo)
Diary of a Champion: No Place Like Home
There's no place like home, and it was definitely good to be back home at Lowe's Motor Speedway. LMS is a track I've only run one time in the past, but I was really excited to get a chance to run there again this year for several reasons. It's kind of like a home track to the teams since you're able to sleep in your own bed at night. You get that small luxury of not being on the road for once. And it's only about a half hour or so from the shop, so it's kind of like being at your home race track. And since I had a lot of friends and family in town and a lot of employees had their friends and family in for the weekend, there's just a different feeling in the air. The Charlotte race is always just a lot of fun. (David Vaughn Photo)
Diary of a Champion: DNF
DNF. Those are three letters that will take you down a notch or two. In my profession, you get to experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and my weekend at Mansfield didn't disappoint. But the race weekend at Mansfield definitely didn’t start out on a bad note. I had a new sponsor on my truck with Showtime Networks and was excited about them being on board as a first-time sponsor in NASCAR. And I was looking forward to my first event on Thursday morning to kick off the race weekend.
Diary of a Champion: Groundhog Day
Have you ever seen that movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray wakes every day and goes through the same events over and over and over again? He just can’t seem to change anything around him. It’s pretty frustrating to watch. But it’s even more frustrating to feel like you’re living that same scenario. That’s about the best way I can describe my experiences at Martinsville.
Diary of a Champion: Staying Focused
It’s been weeks since Daytona, and much too long of a break from the track - so long that I even turned a year older! I celebrated my 28th birthday on the road with my team during a Toyota test at Texas in preparation for Atlanta. My crew had a cake at the track and took me to a nice steak house for dinner. Being the jokesters that they are, they thoroughly enjoyed watching me climb on a fake bull on wheels and wave a dish towel in the air while everyone sang to me. That was definitely a first…and last.
Diary of A Champion: Welcome!
I want to start off by saying thanks to TruckSeries.com for giving me this opportunity to share my experiences throughout the season with my fans. I’m really looking forward to giving you an insider’s view of my new team, Bang Racing, my new manufacturer, Toyota, and a behind the scenes look at what really goes on…on and off the track. So let’s get rolling... Many people have asked me why Toyota? Why did I take the risk of going with not only a new manufacturer but a new team coming off of a championship season? There were so many unknowns. And my answer has been time and time again. I knew this was an opportunity that would propel my career. Being involved with Toyota is great.
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