Carson Kvapil will lead the field to green on Saturday night in the final CARS Late Model Stock Tour race of the season.
He did so by taking the JR Motorsports No. 8 to a fast lap of 17.803 around North Wilkesboro Speedway, just enough to best series championship leader Brenden Queen by .038.
Queen was the first one to get to Kvapil, to congratulate him, but also to detail a plan for the opening lap since he is trying to preserve his points lead above all else on Saturday.
“Just congratulating him,” Queen said. “It’s always cool to get the pole here. I think that’s two for him and me here, so that’s cool. It’s nice to start on the front row with someone you race with a lot so I just wanted to let him know, I’m not there to rough anyone up and get the best finish we can. If we win, we win, if we finish second, that’s good enough.”
Kvapil knows very well what that is like as a two-time champion, and three if you count his Super Late Model championship as well.
“He just wanted to tell me what he was thinking for the race,” Kvapil said. “He’s in a spot there where he would rather go nose to tail instead of beating doors for the win. He has to race a little conservative you could say and I told him I’m just going to go out there and just try to win.”
Kvapil won the inaugural CARS Tour race at North Wilkesboro but that was on the old pavement so he wants to end his Late Model career before going NASCAR Xfinity Series race next year with a win on the new track too.
“Obviously, before the repave, it was a completely different track than what it is now,” Kvapil said. “It couldn’t be any more different. We’ve had good speed here since the repave but we just haven’t hit everything right and hopefully this is one where we do.”
Connor Hall needs to hit everything right to chase Queen down for the championship too, and will also need Queen to have a bad day on Saturday. But Hall will start 10th, far better than the sub-20 starting spot he had here in the summer.
“It stinks this is our last outing together but I feel like we made a lot of leaps and bounds, even here,” said Hall, who is leaving for JR Motorsports next season. “We went half a second faster than the last time we were here, and I think we’re going to race really well too.”
CARS Late Model Stock starting lineup
- Carson Kvapil
- Brenden Queen
- Andrew Grady
- Buddy Isles Jr
- Conner Jones
- Peyton Sellers
- Tristan McKee
- Brent Crews
- Kaden Honeycutt
- Connor Hall
- Jake Bollman
- Chase Burrow
- Treyten Lapcevich
- Connor Mosack
- Ryan Millington
- Landon S Huffman
- Mini Tyrrell
- Trevor Ward
- Landon Huffman
- Parker Eatmon
- Ronnie Bassett Jr
- Isabella Robusto
- Ryan Wilson
- Brandon Pierce
- Dylon Wilson
- Casey Pierce
- Aaron Donnelly
- Travis Baity
