DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Yates Racing Ford Fusion –AS A DRIVER, ARE YOUR THOUGHTS STARTING TO RUN TOWARD THE BUSINESS SIDE OF THIS SPORT RIGHT NOW? “Yes, absolutely. As a driver who’s owned his own team, I certainly realize how much money it takes and what it takes to actually get to the race track each week. It takes plenty of support. And right now we’ve got great support from Ford, and Roush Fenway Racing has helped us out on the technical side. But, we’ve yet to secure that primary sponsor, and that weighs on everybody’s mind. I think everybody will be able to do a better job once we get that locked down. It’s tough, definitely, but now everybody’s doing a good job, I feel like, as far as staying focused and trying to put that behind us as much as we can and just trying to race each race one race at a time.”
DO YOU KNOW WHETHER THERE’S ANYTHING ON THE HORIZON? “I feel really good about the marketing plan we have in place and the people we have working on it. They’re working very hard. There’s a lot of great prospects out there, but nothing is done. In this deal, the talk is the easy part and the signing on the dotted line is the hard part. Until we get that done, nothing’s done.”
TO THAT END, YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION IS ON-TRACK PERFORMANCE. ARE YOU HAPPY WITH HOW THINGS HAVE GONE SO FAR FOR THE TEAM THIS YEAR? “I am, I really am. We took a big step in December and really built two new teams and built two new cars, assembled all new people, for the most part, and it just takes time. We changed some people on some positions. It’s just like a big puzzle and we’re still building it. For us to be 22nd in points right now through six races, I feel pretty good about it. I feel proud about that. I think there’s still a lot of room for us to improve, and just for us to improve a little bit, we could be top-15 no problem. And, honestly, we finish 15th-through-20th in points this year, I think that would be a realistic goal for our team.”
YOU HAD TROUBLES IN QUALIFYING YESTERDAY, BUT, BESIDES THAT, HOW DO YOU LIKE THIS TRACK? “I love Texas Motor Speedway. I love coming here. I love the fans. I love the track. It’s one the fastest tracks we go to. It’s just a lot of fun to race on. What happened in qualifying yesterday was definitely disappointing, but I feel like we had a good car in race trim, and I feel like we put ourselves in a bad position for Sunday as far as pit stall and starting position, but I feel like if the team really digs down deep we can overcome that.”
TRAVIS KVAPIL – No. 28 Yates Racing Ford Fusion – HOW IS THE SPONSORSHIP SEARCH GOING? “I know we’re making a lot of phone calls. We constantly have people making us recommendations and we’re reaching out to them all the time.”
WHAT YOUR THOUGHTS ON HOW THE 38 HAS PERFORMED SO FAR THIS YEAR? “We’ve been a little too much up and down. I feel like we’ve had a few races where we – California and Martinsville, I think, were two races we could’ve run in the top 10. We had troubles with the car, troubles on pit road and held us back. We feel like we’ve been a mid-pack car, other than a few races, so we definitely need to step up a little bit, and get performance going. And, obviously, that’s the best way to attract sponsorship and get people looking our way, is if we’re running up front and running in the top 10. That’s Todd [Parrott, crew chief] and my number-one goal right now, and our engineer and everybody on this team, is trying to get that car up front. That’s going to be the best resolution for all of our troubles, really.”