Travis Kvapil on Media Day Video

An Interview with Travis Kvapil and Joey Logano

DENISE MALOOF: We've had the same conversation with everyone. Any thoughts about an off-season, anything interesting you want to share with us? Were you on a snowmobile, Travis?

TRAVIS KVAPIL: Yeah, I was on a snowmobile, about wore my arm out trying to pull start it. Finally got it going in Wisconsin and spent a lot of time in the snow and riding four-wheelers and pulling sleds with my kids on them behind the four-wheeler and had a lot of fun. It was nice and relaxing and just had a good time.

DENISE MALOOF: Travis, new team, new start. Very interesting start of the year.

TRAVIS KVAPIL: Yeah, I'm really excited about it. Spent 90 percent of the last year kind of watching from the sidelines. So excited to have an opportunity in a time where sponsors seem to be still kind of waiting by the wayside and teams are still kind of shrinking, excited to have this opportunity with Front Row Motorsports. They're kind of ramping up and moving forward. We're excited to have Ford and their manufacturer support behind us, the Roush-Yates engines. It's a great opportunity and just really exciting and looking forward to making the most of it.

Q. Travis, can you talk a little bit about just what it takes to persevere through having a job, not having a job, getting another job, the ups and downs of that?

TRAVIS KVAPIL: For me it was just -- I had to really persevere and stay focused on my goal in trying to figure out the things I needed to do to stay in front of the owners, in front of the sponsors, in front of team managers and that sort of thing. Even though I only ran five, seven races last year, I probably went to 25 races and spent a lot of time in the garage area just not giving up.

The Sprint Cup Series is where I want to race, and just try to look at all the opportunities with the goal in mind to get back to full-time Cup racing. I feel like I'm capable of competing at this level, and that's where I want to be. So I was just focused on figuring out how to find my way there.


Q. Travis, could you talk about the emotion of getting with a team, going to run full-time, a team on the upswing, and you feel like you'll bring some veteran insight to what's a relatively new operation even though they've been around for a number of years?

TRAVIS KVAPIL: Yeah, I really hope so. That's my plan is to just give all the input I can off of my experiences in the past. My teammate Kevin Conway is going to be a rookie, just do everything I can to try to help him. There's definitely going to be bumps in the road, and if I can just kind of ease him through that -- when we get to some places for the first time, show him the things you definitely don't want to do or things to look for, but more than anything, when we're trying to build a team, really from the ground up, it's -- I'm in the office with the general manager daily talking about the personnel that maybe we should hire, the people we need to look at. It's kind of neat being part of such a small thing that is growing, to have that much input. And it's really cool for me that we are going to be hooked back up with Ford and have the Ford Motorsports, Ford Racing behind us. Great relationship in the past, over the past few seasons. So excited about all that.

I know it's going to be a challenge. I know we're going to struggle. But I really feel confident in the base that we're building that we'll get better and progress and really build this team into something that can be really competitive.

DENISE MALOOF: Travis, I'm told you have to leave right now to catch your ride home. Thank you for being patient and waiting. You'll be back soon. Thank you.

Travis Kvapil and Front Row hoping to grow together - SI.com