CONCORD, N.C. — David Gravel was celebrated as the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series at Sunday’s series banquet.
Gravel, who secured the championship after several years of close calls, reflected on everything that happened during his climb to the top of the mountain.
Gravel ran his first season on the World of Outlaws circuit in 2013 and 11 years later became the 11th driver to win the series title since its inception in 1978.
“It’s been a long, fun ride. I’ve been doing this a long time. Eleven years on the outlaw tour. It’s a grueling deal,” Gravel said on Sunday night. “Donny (Schatz) kicked our butt so long. I started out with the All Stars and Tim Shaffer and Dale Blaney kicked my butt every week. You try to uphold yourself to those guys and learn from those guys and the other guys. You learn how to win a championship.
“We’ve run third since 2015 and were second a couple of years ago, and it’s like, ‘Man, can I do this?’ You never really know and when you finally put it all together, it is really special.”
Gravel got his start behind the wheel at a young age.
“I’ve been racing since I was six years old and mostly raced pavement until I turned into a teenager and got a taste of dirt racing for the first time,” he explained. “I saw my first 410 race at Lincoln Speedway and ever since I saw sprint cars, they looked like a lot of fun and I didn’t want to race pavement modifieds in the Northeast. I am very happy with the path that I took. It was a long road.
“My mom and dad sacrificed a lot to give me the opportunities to race micros and 360s,” Gravel continued. “Then Ray Capello and JRC Transportation. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have been able to run the All Star tour back in the day. That put us on that platform and we performed pretty well and won a couple of outlaw shows and it catapulted from there.
“Dennis Roth gave me an opportunity, and really put me on the national scene and we won races with him. Then, from there went to CJB Motorsports and Jason Johnson Racing and now Big Game Motorsports. It’s been a fun ride and I have been able to drive for a lot of good car owners and a lot of people have believed in me over this time.”
As he’s said several times this season, Gravel believes there is a recipe to winning a championship.
“I wish I’d known 10 years ago. It’s hard. Not having DNFs is the biggest thing,” Gravel said. “That and maximizing those bad nights. You need to make sure your bad nights are 12th or 13th-place finishes because that’s what it takes. You really can’t finish out of the top 10 more than five times in a season if you truly want to have a shot at it.
“Luckily for us, we were pretty strong. We won quite a few races this year, which saved us from our DNF and the night we were a couple of laps down.”
The driver of Tod Quiring’s Big Game Motorsports No. 2 sprint car knows the preparation of his team, which is led by crew chief Cody Jacobs, made the difference.
“Cody, Stephen (Hamm-Reilly) and Zack (Patterson), I had a fast race car every night. There was literally one or two out of 75 that we weren’t that great and that is pretty unbelievable,” Gravel said. “Traveling up and down the road and what we see in California and what we see in Pennsylvania is just totally different. They did their jobs.
“We did not have one part failure on the season. That’s something really hard to do. I was in the work area a little more than I wanted but you are always pushing hard,” Gravel continued. “As Donny (Schatz) said, the style of racing has changed a little bit, it is very, very aggressive and as a driver it pushes you to be very aggressive as well. That puts you out of your comfort zone sometimes and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I feel like to be a championship driver, you need to know when the right and wrong place to do that is. Thankfully, I did that well enough to get it done.”
Gravel understands the history behind the World of Outlaws.
“My goal as a driver is to continue to push the World of Outlaws to be the No. 1 series in sprint car racing,” he said. “This is where I want to be. There is a lot of prestige to the World of Outlaw champion and a lot of prestige to that win list. For us to get to that 100 wins this year for both Tod and I, that is very special for all of us.”