Travis Braden- ” I think it’s going to turn into a great championship battle between us and the Venturini cars”

2019 has five different drivers competing for the championship, Michael Self, Travis Braden, Bret Holmes, Joe Graf Jr., and Christian Eckes. Come follow each of their journeys this season where each week we set the timer for five minuets  and sit down with them to find out what’s been going on both in and out of the race car.

Next up, Travis Braden! 

ARCA: Hey! How’s it going? 

Travis: It’s good. Give me one second. I had a podcast playing and it didn’t stop- all good now. 

A: What were you listening to?

T: I was listening to Door Bumper Clear, but I have yet to fall in love with that one yet. 

A: Do you have a favorite podcast?

T: I really like  Dale Jr. Download. That was the first one I listened to and I’ve listened to it quite a bit. The people that he’s had on are people I’ve just always enjoyed hearing their stories and stuff. Not sure if that’s why I like it better, but it’s pretty cool.

A: So what have you been up to?

T: Pretty much a lot of driving. Obviously drove the race, then drove all night got home at like one o’clock in the morning then at 6:30- 7 o’clock this morning- back at work.
Just unload our cars, unload the trailer, clean it up a little bit, reload our Charlotte car for the test- making sure it’s 100% ready to go. Then we hit the road a couple hours ago- driving down now. 

A: You must be dragging. 

T: I’m not too bad, but I think by the time the sun goes down this evening I’ll be pretty whooped. 

A: Right. So what are you hoping to get out of this test tomorrow? 

T: Well, its our first mile and a half of the year so you kinda get to set in for the season really. It’s an important test I feel. Last year when we were here we were a top three or four car in the test and a couple people picked it up and we ran like fifth or sixth in the race, and I feel like we have just as good of a piece (if not better) for this year and I’m excited to get it right and run this race in a couple weeks. 

A: You mentioned last time on our call you had all new equipment and this was your first full week with it. Did it go as well as you were hoping?

T: Yeah, that’s been the topic of the garage it seems like. It was great for us, we were able to kind of update everything we had from last year to this year. This weekend in Nashville was a huge positive. The race didn’t pan out for us, we started off really tight and it was something that we were working on throughout the test and we never quite got it out. And then in the race, trying to free it up, at some point we just crossed a line where it was too much. Not ot make it too complicated, but I felt like I was front end tight and then we got the back end of the car too loose with it and it never really made the car turn any better. That was still a great race for us. We went five laps down in that race last year and the short racks were always our weakenss in 2018. Up until the top three or four cars we were able to compete with the rest of the field for most of the race until the very end I finally just started to fall off too much and wore my tires out too much. I think it was a great positive to build on for the rest of the short track shows. 

A: Obviously everyone is talking to Ty Gibbs and Michael Self about the accident they were involved in with Tommy Vigh, Jr. but I want to talk to you about it too because I’m sure you were not terribly disappointed that the only person above you in the points standings was out of the race. 

T: I mean, I don’t ever look at it that way. But I was like, “Wow, I can’t believe the 25 got into a wreck at that point in the race.” It seemed like we were all pretty spread out and everyone was kind of in their spot, and I didn’t know what happened until after the race. It was kind of a shocker, because obviously we had just lost the points lead to Michael and we wanted to come down to Nashville and get back, but we wanted to get it back by racing him and beating him in the race and actually earning that. I don’t really love the fact that these wrecks keep giving us the points lead, but we’re getting better at the same time and here soon I think it’s going to turn into a great championship battle between us and Venturini cars. 

A: Yeah! It’s going to be fun to watch! 
I saw that you were watching the late model race that came on after us on Sunday. Were you really wishing you had brought yours? 

T: Yeah, the offer was there. It’s just for us the way the schedule was to do both would have impossible. I enjoyed just watching them. I hardly ever get to watch, you know? 

A: Sure! Well that’s been five minutes so I will let you get back to driving. 

T: Already? Well thanks! See ya!