When it comes to Martinsville, reigning NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion Travis Kvapil could be playing the part of Bill Murray in his own version of Groundhog’s Day. It was déjà vu all over again during the Kroger 250 as he struggled with tight conditions and looming doubts about the team’s pit strategy.

“The truck was pushing all day,” he said. “We were just really tight, and for whatever reason, we couldn’t make the truck turn through the middle of the corner.”

Following strong runs in practice and a solid sixth place qualifying run, Kvapil quickly climbed two marks before completing one lap as the first of a dozen caution periods fell over the field. Despite battling similar problems as teammate Mike Skinner, Kvapil was able to keep his No. 24 Line-X Tundra inside the top eight as the crew attempted to free up his ride with track bar and air pressure adjustments during the first pit stop on Lap 82. With four fresh tires, Kvapil exited pit road in sixth position gaining two spots and another essential element at Martinsville, track position.
With less than a 100 laps to go, a critical decision on pit road kept Kvapil on track while others used an early pit stop to their advantage.
The miscue shuffled Kvapil mid-pack where he struggled to find clean air and reclaim positioning in the top-10. 

“I’m a little disappointed at our 13th place finish,” he said. “We had to pit out of sequence and that caused us to lose track position. Every time I’ve come here, it’s been a pretty big factor. If you’re not running that well, you try to pit early and get a little bit of positioning over the faster competitors. At the time, we were running in the top-eight the whole race, and we thought we were probably good enough to pit with leaders. But a handful of guys pitted early. As it worked out at the end, there were probably more caution laps the last 100 laps of the race than there were green flag laps. So the drivers that pitted later and had newer tires, it just wasn’t a big benefit for us.”

“It would’ve been nice to pit early, get out in front and have some clean race track for a little while,” Kvapil said. “I know we definitely learned from it. We definitely need to work on our short track program.
Our next race is a short track coming up so we need to go to work and find out what our problem was. I know my teammate was fighting the same things. He even had a looser setup than I did, and he was still tight.
So we’ve got our homework cut out for us. We’ll just do some more testing here in the next month and look forward to getting our team back on track at Mansfield.”

The defending champion will return to the track second in points behind leader Carl Edwards when the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series resumes racing action at the inaugural running of the Ohio 250 in Mansfield, Ohio, on May 16.