Travis Kvapil and Yates Racing: A Story of Security

    Travis Kvapil has never been so secure in the Sprint Cup Series.

    His Yates Racing team is unsponsored, of course. Much has been made of this fact around the garage; a former series powerhouse can’t attract a full-season sponsor for either of its two cars. When the Mars Company withdrew its sponsorship of both cars after last season, fans wondered if the team would survive the season. Combined with a new ownership group taking control of the team, the stability that Yates experienced in the 1990s was gone.

For the most part, Kvapil’s car has carried nothing more than a black number 28 and a small K&N decal all season, in stark contrast to the Kodak and Tide cars Kvapil ran in previous Cup seasons. The K&N associate sponsorship, carried over from a successful stint in the Craftsman Truck Series for Roush Fenway Racing last year, isn’t enough to fund the team all season, but it at least helps.

    Kvapil’s performance hasn’t hurt his cause either. At Talladega in April, Kvapil scored a career-best sixth place finish. At Las Vegas, and again at Darlington, Kvapil finished eighth. After the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, Kvapil’s running total of laps completed was 4044, only twenty less than the 4064 scheduled in twelve races – behind only Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer.

    Kvapil’s solid but quiet performance has attracted many of his former sponsors at Roush Fenway to support the car for one race each: after the eighth place finish at Las Vegas, Zaxby’s Restaurants, who sponsor Kvapil’s part-time Truck Series ride for Roush Fenway this season, came on board at Atlanta, and Discount Tire signed on to sponsor the car at Richmond after Kvapil’s sixth place at Talladega.

    Without the consistent, reliable funding of a single primary sponsor, and with driver and team in their first season together, the season has been a learning experience for both Kvapil and Yates Racing. Despite the challenge of running an underfunded operation, however, the team has clicked well enough to stand 19th in points a third of the way through the season.

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    Todd Parrott hasn’t been in this position before either.

    Save for a brief stint with Petty Enterprises in 2006, Parrott has been a Yates lifer, serving as crew chief for drivers Dale Jarrett, Elliott Sadler, and David Gilliland, Kvapil’s teammate this season. He oversaw the crew that won the 1999 Winston Cup with Jarrett. Between 1995 and 2002, that team won 27 races together while proudly flying the colors of Texaco/Havoline, Ford’s Quality Care service, and UPS.

    For that matter, the No. 28 team, in all its history, had never seen a blank hood either. Whether you trace back the car’s owners points to the No. 88 with Jarrett, or the number’s history with drivers like Ernie Irvan, Ricky Rudd, or the late Davey Allison, Yates cars have always been financially secure. In fact, until Daytona this year, no No. 28 Ford campaigned by Yates hadn’t carried Texaco/Havoline decals in a race.

    In a struggling economy, teams are having issues finding any new sponsors at all: most of the sponsors involved in any of NASCAR’s top three series have histories in the sport that date back to, at the very least, the early 2000s. Super teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Fenway attract the sponsors away from smaller organizations, offering limited partnerships with Sprint Cup drivers in the Nationwide Series at a lower cost than funding a Cup team’s entire 36-race schedule. If a sponsor can associate itself with a higher-caliber driver at a fraction of the cost of running a full season in Sprint Cup, especially when better race results are nearly guaranteed, usually it capitalizes on the opportunity.

    Some current series sponsors could do worse than signing a deal with Yates: Teams sponsored by Caterpillar and Texas Instruments have struggled to stay within the top-35 this season, yet remain committed to their poorly performing teams. Such is the problem that the No. 28 team faces. Despite its consistency, guaranteed starting position in races through NASCAR’s top-35 owners’ points rule, and history of high-caliber performance in Sprint Cup, it seems the team cannot catch a break.

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    Perhaps Kvapil wouldn’t be performing so well this season if he hadn’t spent time in the Truck Series last year, in order to rebuild his confidence. After a dismal season with PPI Motorsports in 2006, Kvapil saw his team fold into Michael Waltrip Racing, leaving him without a ride in NASCAR’s top series. His performance for Penske Racing in 2005, a 33rd-place finish in points with two top-tens, was not so enticing either, even to teams like Morgan-McClure Motorsports or BAM Racing. Out of luck, Kvapil signed with Jack Roush’s flagship truck, the No. 6 Ford, for the 2007 season.

    Immediately the team showed positive results. As the 2003 Craftsman Truck Series champion, Kvapil proved an attractive driver to sponsors, and K&N Filters put their money behind the team just before the first race of the season. In a thrilling conclusion to that race, Kvapil was barely beaten to the start-finish line by Jack Sprague and Johnny Benson.

In the first 19 races of the season, Kvapil finished no worse than 16th place, and only failed to finish a single race: the third-to-last race of the season at Texas. He won races at Michigan, Memphis, Nashville, and Las Vegas, winning from the pole at Michigan and Las Vegas. He also scored a third pole at Bristol, where he led 91 of 200 laps. Kvapil was never worse than 9th place in the series’ standings all season, finishing 6th overall.

After reasserting himself as a capable driver, given capable equipment, Kvapil was signed by the once-mighty Yates Racing, currently a partner with Roush in engine development, to replace the departing Ricky Rudd.

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Now Kvapil finds himself 19th in Sprint Cup points, heading into the Best Buy 400 at Dover. 2008 is easily poised to be Kvapil’s best season in NASCAR’s top series; for the first time, he finds himself in equipment capable of contending for race wins. (Ask Bobby Hamilton Jr. for his thoughts on the No. 32 car in 2005, and remember that the two guys sitting ahead of Kvapil at Penske had a combined 67 wins and 71 poles at the end of the 2005 season.) Despite the lack of reliable sponsorship, the team that won the 1999 championship has continually provided Kvapil with cars that can, if nothing else, finish races on the lead lap. Given his ability to consistently finish every race this season, he shouldn’t find his car unsponsored for long.

This season, Travis Kvapil has no reason to feel insecure.