By: Ashley McCubbin

Last week, we released the first part of our interview with Carson Kvapil in talking about going between two different teams for the 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series schedule. Now, we talk about Bristol and his strengths and weaknesses

With how well the 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series season has started for Carson Kvapil with four top-10’s in the first eight races to sit eighth in the standings, it’s not a surprise to hear how excited he is about heading to Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend.

The half-mile high-banked oval has treated Kvapil well in the past, as he placed second and fourth in the pair of events there last season.

“Traditionally, I think JR Motorsports as a whole is really good there, but I feel like as a driver, I’ve been very comfortable there and it’s not really like I’ve had more laps there than other tracks,” Kvapil told News From The Pits. “It’s just that track kind of suits my style, a fast high-banked drive the drive the crap out of it type of racetrack, and we’ve ran good there traditionally and qualified good and just had good feed all around.

“For that race, I will be with Philip Bell, the No. 9 car for that race, and I feel like he has traditionally had a good top-five car. So I think we should have a good race.”

Confidence is always a good thing, and knowing the short tracks are among the strengths for both himself as a driver and JR Motorsports. Ultimately, he feels they have a good package all the way around, as evident by the confidence extending to road courses and the superspeedways. The only spot he feels he could use improvement as a driver would be the intermediates. 

“There’s times I go out there and I qualify in the top-three and run top-five all day, and it’s easy, but there’s times where we go, and it’s just we’re struggling to run 10th,” he commented. “It’s for some reason it’s that way and I’m not really sure why. But I felt like our No. 9 car (at) Las Vegas race – so far our only mile and a half this season, we started off a little bit off and we had a top-five car at the end, just burned our regular tire off. So we just need to figure those ones out a little.” 

Kvapil went on to say if they can work on qualifying and having better restarts, it should help him in the long run. He feels they are good once you get on a long run, but then have lost so much track positions due to either a bad starting spot or the restart, and are forced to spend time making it up. 

“I feel like I got the base driving the race car down; I just need to polish all the bookends of it,” he explained. “I mean, we watch Kyle Larson and Ross Chastain and Christopher Bell run these O’Reilly Auto Parts races and they’re just perfect. They don’t make mistakes and they have the same car and they can run the same speed as us; they’re just better at all the details. So I kind of feel like I’m good where I’m at driving the race car – I mean, I could always do better and we could always be faster, but I feel your biggest chunk we can gain right now or the restarts in qualifying. So that’s really the biggest thing. Then from there it’s just details and how to position yourself better aerodynamically when racing other cars and whatnot.”