Kvapil wins O'Reilly 200 at Memphis

MILLINGTON, Tenn. -- Travis Kvapil used the race's best truck -- and great communications -- to win the second NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race of his career Saturday in the O'Reilly Auto Parts 200 at Memphis Motorsports Park.

Credit: HSP

Kvapil, whose last victory in the No. 60 CAT Chevrolet came 11 races ago at Texas Motor Speedway, took the lead for the final time on lap 131, led 117 of 200 laps and held off Terry Cook's No. 29 Power Stroke Ford on two restarts in the last 40 laps to win by .187 seconds.

"Man, I tell you -- I think every corner I drove I was looking in the mirror just to make sure he was still behind me and didn't have a nose under me," Kvapil said. "Terry definitely had a little bit better truck than we did but a track like this, it is so hard to pass and I was able to just stay real smooth and real consistent and run my line -- that was the biggest thing.

"If I would have slipped up an inch, he would have been able to dive right under me and take the line. It was nerve wracking for a while. When he caught me with 30 or 40 to go, I didn't think I was going to be able to hold him off."

"I think it was a situation that if we could have got by Travis, we may have been able to drive away," Cook said. "He did a great job and kept his truck on the bottom of the track. You needed to be on the bottom and that's where he was running."

Ultra Motorsports teammates Ted Musgrave in the No. 1 Mopar Dodge and Bud Pole winner Jason Leffler in the No. 2 Team ASE Dodge and defending race-winner Dennis Setzer in the No. 46 Axciom Chevrolet rounded out the top five.

At a number of junctures Cook closed to Kvapil's bumper but could never make a run on him. Cook said he was a victim of an aero push -- when a leading vehicle disrupts the airflow across the nose of the following vehicle and decreases its front downforce.

"I had him a couple times, getting underneath him in Turn 1 (and) he started to come down the track when I was beside him," Cook said. "If I would have hit him, he probably would have wrecked. I wouldn't have done that because that's not the way I race. Hopefully, Travis will return the favor one day."

"I kept on Travis pretty hard the last 30 laps to protect the bottom," Kvapil's crew chief, Rick Ren, said. "With 50 laps to go, I wouldn't have bet a nickel that we could have won this race because we were too loose."

Two of the key moments in the race came on pit sequences. On the first, Kvapil pitted a lap before most of the other lead lap trucks early in the race when his spotter, Doug Sigmon, radioed him that the backstretch pit entrance was open as soon as NASCAR made that call over its radio system.

"By having the lead early we dictated what everyone had to do in terms of pitting -- what we did in the pits today put us in position to win this race," Ren said. "Some of the other teams were raising Cain with us saying pit road wasn't open, but it was.

"Our spotter, Doug Sigmon, listens to NASCAR and he told Travis immediately, 'pit road's open' and we brought him in. Doug's been our spotter forever. Once we were up front, we were good enough to win, I guess."

Later in the event Setzer, who led 41 laps but used up his trick twice trying to come from behind and who was second behind Kvapil at the halfway point, missed pit entrance because of a miscommunication with his crew.

"Dennis Setzer had a really good truck and they kind of got messed up in the pits and got behind," Ren said. "That's where we would have been on the first pit stop if not for Doug's call."

Finishing in the top 10 were Rich Bickle, who made his first Truck Series start since 1999, in the Dickies Ford; point leader David Starr in the Spears Chevrolet; Coy Gibbs in the MBNA Chevrolet; Rick Crawford in the Circle Bar Ford; and Brian Rose in the PerryConnection.com Dodge.

Starr battled an ill-handling truck and saw his lead over Musgrave -- who jumped over Crawford in the standings -- shrink to a single point. The unofficial margin between Starr and fifth place Leffler is only 106 points.

Fourth place point man Mike Bliss made the comeback of the event by outracing the leaders to make up five laps in the IWX Chevrolet and finishing 18th.

Brother and sister Randy and Teri MacDonald each finished the race, but did not equal the top-11 performance scored by Tim Flock and sister Ethel Flock Mobley 53 years ago in the NASCAR Strictly Stock division.

Randy MacDonald finished 20th, the last truck on the lead lap. His sister, who brought out two of the race's eight cautions when she spun out after tangling with the leaders while being lapped, finished 29th, nine laps down.