If you were on Naval Base Coronado in San Diego on Saturday (June 20) and your name isn’t Austin Hill, you likely had a very long, awful day.
You may have been Corey Day and run over a manhole cover on the opening lap. You may have been one of the two dozen cars collected in a wreck midway through the race. If you weren’t racing, maybe you were in charge of cleaning up that mess. Then again, at least you weren’t this guy.
But there’s maybe two people who left feeling like they had more to get out of what might be a one-off appearance for the NASCAR O’Reilly Series at Coronado. One is Taylor Gray, who was passed by Hill for the lead and eventually the win before finishing second.
The other was the person Gray took the lead from, Carson Kvapil, and boy has he had plenty of days like Saturday in his young career.
Kvapil had arguably the best car of the day, leading 15 laps and running the race’s fastest lap, before Gray managed to hunt him down with three to go. The two raced side-by-side through many of the course’s back half. Then, entering turn 14, Gray slid up into Kvapil and took him out of contention.
“(The battle) was going to be good,” Kvapil said. “We’ve raced forever, since we were kids. We haven’t had any trouble until this year. We’ve gotten into each other a few times and it’s kind of accidental stuff. Nothing malicious.”
And after talking with Gray postrace, Kvapil still felt that way. While it appeared that there was plenty of room between the No. 1 and No. 54, Gray used it all up and practically door slammed him. But Kvapil didn’t get the sense it was intentional.
“Whenever that happens, it’s pretty easy to go straight to ‘I got wrecked,’” Kvapil said. “It might have happened. He might have gone in there and aimed for my left-rear quarter panel. It’s just hard racing at the end of the day.”
Thankfully for Kvapil, we are no longer in the age of win and you’re in. He didn’t have to come flying out of his cars yelling about stickers a la Chris Buescher and Tyler Reddick at Darlington two years ago. He’s still comfortably in seventh, 119 points above the cut line with six races until The Chase.
But now with 60 starts in his O’Reilly career, most coming with the series’ most dominant team, questions are going to start coming hard and heavy. Why hasn’t he won yet?
So far he’s maybe been able to turn to one or two other races this season where he’s even been in a position to win. One of them was at Kansas where, thanks to Connor Zilisch winning in the No. 1 the week prior and rain cancelling qualifying, he started on the pole. Then, before he could get to turn 3 on lap 2, he was on his roof.
Kvapil has one of the best laps completed percentages in the O’Reilly Series. Besides his three crashes this season at EchoPark, Martinsville and Kansas, he’s finished every race at least on the lead lap. However, he had led just 55 laps before this past weekend.
But when he has those chances, how does he pull through and win? After Saturday, I have one idea: Kvapil needs to get to get a little bit of a mean streak.
Don’t get me wrong, Kvapil shouldn’t head to Sonoma this weekend and wreck Gray every chance he’s got. But when he’s able to fight for wins, he needs to fight tooth and nail for it. In spots like he was in at Coronado, he’s got to get elbows out and play a little rough to get the win. It’s not ideal, but it’s a necessity to shake the question of “When?” off of him.
When it comes remains a question. It likely won’t be this weekend at Sonoma as he’s in a DGM Racing ride and the dominant duo of Shane van Gisbergen and Zilisch are back in the field. But what happens when that win comes, likely, will be more success down the road.
When Sheldon Creed finally got his first career win at EchoPark back in February, it was a huge boost to his confidence and performance. He finished in the top 10 in 10 of the next 11 races and got all the way to second in the standings. Has he won since? No. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about a guy who feels like a championship contender.
That’s what can await Kvapil with a win: wind in his sails and fuel to a potential title run.
James Krause joined Frontstretch in March 2024 as a contributor. Krause was born and raised in Illinois and graduated from Northern Illinois University. He currently works in Fort Wayne, Indiana covering minor league, college and high school sports. Outside of racing, Krause loves to keep up with football, music, anime and video games.
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