How does Carson Kvapil follow-up a debut CARS Late Model Stock Tour season for JR Motorsports in which he won four times en route to the championship?
Winning at least five times and winning another championship probably.
That’s got to be the starting point for the 19-year-old in his return season with crew chief Bryan Shaffer and their entire No. 8 team all returning from last season. The only difference is a high-profile partnership with Bass Pro Shops.
No pressure.
Adding to the pressure is that three-time CARS Tour champion Bobby McCarty has made the move to R&S Race Cars, with Cale Gale filling his previous ride at Nelson Motorsports, with Chad Bryant Racing adding a second car for Mason Diaz to pair with returning runner-up Connor Hall.
Chad McCumbee returns as a veteran capable of winning races with Jacob Heafner, Andrew Grady, Mini Tyrrell and Chase Burrow amongst the would-be contenders as well.
Stout.
“Definitely tougher competition this year,” said Kvapil, the son of Cup Series veteran Travis. “It’s a stellar combination of cars, and I think wins are going to be harder to come by this year.
“We can always strive to be more consistent, clean up some finishes here or there.”
That’s candidly hilarious coming from a driver who boasted a 4.4 finish in 20 starts last season across CARS Tour, NASCAR Weekly and Triple Crown races last season.
This is a development driver Chevrolet has a lot of conviction in, sponsoring much of his season alongside Bass Pro Shops, in addition to the full endorsement of Dale Earnhardt Jr. With that in mind, Kvapil having raced against Earnhardt at North Wilkesboro and Florence three times last season was amongst the highlights of his career so far.
“It was a lot of fun at Wilkesboro helping each other out,” Kvapil said. “Me wanting to lean on him and then him wanting to lean on me for help. It was cool because he’s the boss, or whatnot, but we put our helmets on to race, and we raced each other hard.
“At Florence in November, I was trying to get from the top to the bottom, and I thought he was going to let me in, and he didn’t. It’s cool for us to be competitive with each other as if we were any other drivers out there.”
Kvapil most recently raced at Southern National Motorsports Park in November in the Thanksgiving Classic, a race won by teammate Josh Berry, giving him a lot of confidence heading into the season opener on Saturday.
“I want to have a consistent, stay-out-of-trouble kind of race,” Kvapil said. “I think it is going to be like the race we ran last season. Tire wear is going to be pretty big and holding track position without burning your stuff up is going to be a pretty big deal. Getting the car right is going to be really important. If you’re off a little bit, that place exaggerates tire wear a lot. If we have the car right, which I think we will, we’ll have a good finish.”
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