Special from Speed51.com – When Carson Kvapil climbed into his Super Late Model for the North/South Super Late Model Challenge, he laid eyes on the guitar awaiting the race’s winner. And when he saw the guitar, he knew he had to earn himself one.
With two opportunities to get one Saturday night, he just needed one. The 17-year old lead all 100 laps to pick up the win in the tri-sanctioned North/South Super Late Model Challenge Saturday night.
REPLAY: North/South SLM Challenge at Nashville
Going into the race, Kvapil knew he needed to have a right rear tire at the end of the race if he wanted a guitar.
“I saw the guitars when I was getting in the car and I knew I had to have one. I told myself I couldn’t burn the right rear tire off, I needed one of them,” Kvapil told Speed51. “I finally got one, hopefully we can get more.”
Kvapil set fast time in qualifying during the afternoon and after the Southern Super Series lineup method was chosen, he redrew the pole position. He took off from the jump and was mostly unchallenged throughout the race amid lapped traffic.
“I fired off and I was hoping to get the lead and pace the field and get a good gap so I could conserve and that’s exactly what happened. It seemed like whenever I would just finally get out to a lead and backing it up the caution would come out. I didn’t think the cautions helped but we had a good Toby Car Lefthander and could keep going.”
After going winless in Super Late Model competition for nearly two full seasons, Kvapil is now one of the hottest drivers in the discipline. He followed a North-South Shootout victory in November 2020 with a CARS Tour win at Hickory in March and a runner-up in a CARS Tour/Southern Super Series combination event at Greenville-Pickens Speedway.
“We’ve been on a roll here. We won Hickory, we should’ve won Greenville and won this race. I think the past three or four races I think we haven’t finished worse than second in the Super. We’re on a roll and hopefully we can keep it going.” – Carson Kvapil
Matt Craig was able to close the gap considerably while Kvapil was in lapped traffic, but that would be as close as the two-time defending CARS Tour champion would get. He would finish runner-up in the event, the second time he has finished just behind a winning Kvapil this year.
“I thought our car was really good in practice and it was good in the race, we just needed a little bit more to catch Kvapil. Ty Majeski and Toby (Nuttleman) are really good and he’s got the same thing they got. We’ve got a little bit of work to do to find more speed but we’ll work on it.”
Rounding out the top-five was Stephen Nasse, Jake Garcia and Sammy Smith.
A full replay of Saturday night’s race will be available soon on Speed51.TV.
-Story by: Koty Geyer, Speed51 National Correspondent – Twitter: @kgeyer3
– Photo Credit: Speed51/Brandon Zumbach
North/South SLM Challenge Unofficial Results
- Carson Kvapil
- Matt Craig
- Stephen Nasse
- Jake Garcia
- Sammy Smith
- Hunter Jack
- Jackson Boone
- Jeremy Pate
- Cody Coughlin
- Dalton Armstrong
- Jett Noland
- Kodie Conner
- Michael Simko
- Scotty Tomasik
- Kyle Bryant
- Jake Finch
- Michael House
- Johnny Brazier
- Hunter Robbins
- Jeff Batten
- Kyle Reid
- Justin Crider
- Travis Benjamin
- Jesse Love
- Dusty Williams
- Hudson Halder
- Jeremy Barclay