Track walk at Charlotte Motor Speedway Coca-Cola 600

Track walk at Charlotte Motor Speedway Coca-Cola 600
Track walk at Charlotte Motor Speedway Coca-Cola 600

Monday, July 1, 2013

My first "sheet metal" find! A Travis Kvapil door panel!

(Vocab For the NASCAR Newb: Race Used "sheet metal" are pieces of the body of the car that are collected by some NASCAR enthusiasts. )

I have to admit that I never thought that I'd find a piece of sheet metal that I could afford. As a teacher with limited means (mentioned merely as a fact- not discontent), I simply never thought I'd have something like that to hang on my wall. Well, this past Saturday I found one.

I'm an avid garage sale scavenger and auction goer and Saturday was no different. We were out to buy my oldest son more books to read and to stop and get a bagel, and on the way home we noticed some boy scouts holding a sign for a garage sale. It was on the opposite side of the road from where we were sitting and I turned left to go home. My son pleaded with me to do a u-turn. Oh gosh. I relented and rolled my eyes- unbeknownst to him of course, made the u-turn and found ourselves in the parking lot of a little church off of a back road. It was already late, and I was sure all of the good finds had already found new homes. Boy was I wrong...

As I walked in their fellowship hall style room, I saw the normal stacks of books, some beat up bikes, kitchenware, then something caught my eye in the corner. It was a race-used door panel to a stock car. There was even a 8x10 photo taped to the corner. Travis Kvapil? I know that name. But from where? Nationwide maybe? I have to admit, I didn't know which series Travis drove. (Yes, more proof that I'm still a newb...) I looked at my son and said, "Wouldn't it be cool to get THIS signed?" He smiled, then after a few seconds we realized that it had already BEEN signed (you can see it near the middle of the 3.) Then, we casually walked away.

No joke, we just walked away to look at other things. I had seen sheet metal on sale before at races, on the web, and even during our tours of local race shops; I knew I couldn't afford it.  The more popular drivers go for $200-300 right? I mean, it had to be at LEAST $100. Even $50 was too rich for my means.


As we walked away a lady yelled "Everything is half off!" and we continued our search for anything worth procuring. My son brought me a book and asked if I'd buy it for him. The same lady passed and I asked her about the book. She replied $.25. "Oh ok. Just out of curiosity, how much for the #38 panel?" As she replied, time stood still and I watched her utter this magic number, "Five dollars." At first it didn't compute. Did she think I was pointing at something else? Was there anything else that had the number 38 on it in the room? After a minute I regained my composure, smiled and stated matter-of-factly, "I think I'll take that."

After I walked back over to the panel with a much keener eye, I noticed that there was a $10 tag stuck on there.  What were they thinking? I don't know, but I know what I was thinking: score. Not only did I get a panel that, I later learned, was run in a Sprint Cup race, I got it at half price. The only negative was that it did not reveal which race it had been run.  After some research I found that Travis ran the white Long John's Silver car in over half of 2011 races and had many brushes with the wall as well as with other cars. 

It could have been here with his brush with Dale Jr. : 




Or even here in the "big one" at Daytona: 
 

I don't know if I'll ever know the answer to this mystery, or whether the marks on the panel are from a wall or another car, but man, it's going to look great hanging from my wall.   

After posting this blog, I received a polite tweet from Travis Kvapil. Thanks Travis! Honored to have your panel- I'll take good care of it!