Travis Pastrana on… NASCAR

Travis Pastrana is a man that’s done everything. He’s raced bikes and cars, leapt through the air on literally anything that’s got wheels – and some things without, and even jumped out of a plane without a parachute.

He is also the ringleader of Nitro Circus Live, a ground-breaking action sports arena show which has been touring the world for almost a decade. Ahead of the show’s recent visit to Manchester, Pastrana and I caught up at his hotel where we sat down to discuss a number of elements of his varied career.

Next on the agenda is NASCAR. Pastrana tried to crack America’s premier motorsport category in the early 2010s after winning four US rally titles. He’s the first to admit it didn’t go particularly well, telling me before I even delved into the subject that he was “not very good”.

Read more: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4

 

“That’s where all the top drivers in the US go”

 

That soundbite doesn’t tell the full story of Pastrana’s foray into stock car racing though. He made his first NASCAR start in 2012, racing part time in the truck and Xfinity (then Nationwide) series, before taking on a full year in the second-tier competition in 2013.

This whole story though could have been entirely different had Subaru remained in the World Rally Championship. The Japanese marque exited the series at the height of the global financial crisis, putting a premature end to a possible graduation to rallying’s highest echelon for Pastrana.

“I won four US championships in rallying, so it was either WRC – but Subaru had just pulled out and I kind of didn’t have any footholds there [and] I’d have to leave Nitro and everything – or I could stay [in the US] and do NASCAR and see how that goes,” he said. “That’s where all the top drivers in the US go.”

“At the end of the day I didn’t understand much about NASCAR before I got in, it just looks like two left turns. I thought it would be fun – race on the weekends, get the weeks off, but that’s the opposite of what it is.”

Coming from competing in no more than nine North American rally events each year to running over 30 races on the NASCAR circuit was the biggest thing for Pastrana who admitted that if he was to enjoy a step-up in performance on the ovals, he’d have to make sacrifices that he wasn’t prepared to make.

“It was a very humbling experience but I realised that I wasn’t willing to put in the time – willing or able are two different things – but I wasn’t going to have a marriage, and I had a kid the first year and I thought I can’t do what it takes on both ends to even see if I was good enough to get to that level.”

The commitment levels required by NASCAR racers, even from a young age left a lasting impact on Pastrana, who described them as “probably the most underrated set of drivers”.

“They’re driving every single day of the week,” Pastrana explained. “A driver like Kyle Busch who might spend two days, the whole two days, in the shop ­– and if you’re in the shop after 6AM, you’re a lazy piece of crap. That’s just how it is. Everyone’s there at 5AM, everyone’s there until 5PM working on everything.”

“Kyle Larson when I was racing, he was 16 years old – him and Chase Elliott – and I was like 29, I’m battling these kids and they’re racing a go-kart race on Sunday, they’re racing a Late Model on Monday, they’re racing a dirt track on Tuesday, they’re in the shop Wednesday Thursday, they’re iRacing every day,” he said. “The amount of time that those guys put in is amazing.”

“If I was single, no kids in there, I would’ve been so pissed off,” he said. “I would’ve been in the shop, on iRacing, you wouldn’t have seen me do anything but that until I’d figured out if I could’ve done it or not.”

“I kind of took a step back and I put a lot of my own money into it and I said okay, it’s either put everything in and maybe come out with nothing, or do what you know how to do and then hopefully you have time there.”

 

“The Daytona 500 is on the bucket list”

 

With a wife, two young kids, a packed touring schedule, and the development of Nitro Rallycross and Nitro World Games occupying almost all of Pastrana’s time these days, one would be forgiven for thinking that the NASCAR book had been closed, but that’s not the case. Pastrana’s last NASCAR start came in 2017, in what was a one-off appearance in the Truck series at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but it may not be his last.

“I’d love to do a truck series [race], maybe jump in with Matt Crafton,” he said. “He was awesome, [he] kind of took me under his wing and I hate that I wasn’t able to be competitive there – I guess that was probably the thing that frustrated me the most.”

“The Daytona 500 is on the bucket list but that would require me going and maybe doing a year of trucks and really focussing in on that, but one thing at a time.”

Other races outside of NASCAR and rallycross could be possible for Pastrana as well, but he admits that he would need to up his game on pavement.

“I’ve never been great at pavement, on motorcycles or in cars,” he said. “With a circuit race, if you gave everyone a hundred laps, my first lap will be as good as I’ll get. Second, third lap I’m on my pace, but they [will] keep getting better and better and I need to work out why that is.”

One race that Pastrana isn’t eyeing up is, perhaps surprisingly, the only dirt race on NASCAR’s national tour – the Truck series’ Eldora Dirt Derby. On paper the loose surface race would appear to be right up Pastrana’s street, but he says the characteristics of the clay oval make it close to a tarmac race than the dirt he competed on in motocross and rallying.

“It’s kind of the opposite because Eldora – racing those vehicles it gets so ‘one line’,” Pastrana explained. “It’s kind of like rallycross too – I was always fastest on the dirt until you’ve got that one groove where it’s, for me, almost worse than pavement because if you mess that line by just this much, you’re done or you’re slow.”