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Travis Gregg Drives the Pro Fast Line |
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August 13, 2005. Exactly one year ago today an unknown driver
absolutely stunned the IRL’s Menards Infiniti Pro Series, its fans, the
media – and himself. He had climbed into the number 5
Dallara/Infiniti/Firestone car of Sam Schmidt Motorsports, went out
onto the 1.5 mile tri-oval Kentucky Speedway and ran a 190.398 mph
qualification lap for the following day’s Kentucky 100 IPS race.
When qualifications were over, he had the pole for his first Pro Series
race! This young driver was no longer unknown; his name was the
buzz around the place. Everybody was talking about this new
rookie from Camden, Ohio, the All American looking guy, Travis Gregg.  Photo credit: Ron McQueeney/ IRL
Most new drivers who arrive at the Pro Series have won lots of races
and numerous championships in lower level racing series. Travis
Gregg never had the opportunity to be able to drive a full season in
any series, and, therefore, to win many races, let alone any
championships. No wonder he was unknown. What Travis did bring
with him to the Series, however, was that he had learned how to drive,
how to race and how to be quick.
Gregg’s Kentucky accomplishment was even more astounding because he had
knocked his new teammate, Thiago Medeiros, off the pole and into second
fastest. Of the seven previous races, Medeiros had five poles;
five in a row, in fact. That went with Thiago’s four victories at
the time. Gregg’s 190+ mph pole also set the Series record for
the Kentucky track. The 2002 pole sitter, A. J. Foyt IV, the
Series Champion that year, qualified at 179.571 mph, and 2003 pole
sitter, Mark Taylor, the Series Champion that year, qualified at
183.774 mph. [Photo rt., Travis and Sam after 2005 Homestead win.]
What was Travis’ reaction to all of this? “I was shocked. I
didn’t expect it because my teammate at the time, Thiago Medieros, was
winning the Series, and so many races and poles already. I
thought, he’s probably thinking, who’s this kid coming in from the dirt
track and beats me off the pole position. It was kind of cool
though, because Thiago was like, ‘Hey, Travis, that was great.’”
The real test, though, would be how good Travis was on race day.
Would Medeiros quickly pass Gregg? The answers was no.
Travis led the first 40 of the 67 lap race before Medeiros was able to
take the lead away from him – for one lap. Travis quickly
repassed Thiago on lap 42 and held onto the lead until lap 59. At that
point Leonardo Maia slipped underneath Travis. P. J. Chesson then
passed Travis on the high side, and Maia two laps later to take the
lead. P. J. went on to win the race. Travis ended up
finishing 5th.
As Travis recalls, “I didn’t run in much traffic that whole day and
when two cars got in front of me I got in their bad air. I wasn’t
really that comfortable at that time [not having ever run a Pro car in
traffic at those speeds]. In the corners the car started sliding
around so that’s when I kind of backed out of it.” For the rest
of the race, as he said, “I was just trying to hold on and stay safe
because it was my first race, and put away a top-five finish.”
After Kentucky Travis ran two more races last year for Sam Schmidt,
Chicago and Texas. At Chicago, he again qualified on the front
row, with Medeiros back on the pole and winning the race. Travis
finished 13th with a poor handling car. 
Texas was another matter though. This time, in the Pro season’s
final race, Gregg qualified for the third time on the front row, next
to pole sitter Medeiros again, and finished second. Medeiros won
the race [and the Series championship], but Travis, who finished second,
only 0.0562 seconds behind – the fourth closest finish in the Pro
Series history at that time, hounded him the whole way.
In just his first three Pro races, Travis had impressed a lot of
people, but most importantly Sam Schmidt. Sam signed Travis for
the 2005 season. He would be driving the white, Lucas Oil
Products/Sam Schmidt Motorsports car number 7. At last, Travis
would have an opportunity to run a whole season. At the March 6,
opener at Homestead-Miami Speedway Travis showed his appreciation and
gratitude to Sam. He won the pole and he won the race, leading
every lap!
We wanted to find out how Travis Gregg got to be such a good driver, so
we asked Lori Smith, Accounts Representative at Williams Company of
America, Inc., who handles PR for Sam Schmidt Motorsports [and the Sam
Schmidt Paralysis Foundation], if she would be kind enough to arrange
an interview for us with Travis. She did. It is an All
American story, so we will let Travis tell most of the story.
“I’m from Camden, Ohio. [He was born March 28, 1978.] I have an
older brother and an older sister. I’m the youngest in the
family. My Mom and Dad have been together for, well, a long
time. My Dad was a go-karter and he started racing go-karts at
our track in Camden, G & J Kartway. He was pretty young then
and just made a track in the grass on the property and he started
driving around on it. Then my Grandpa paved it! It was like
an oval shaped track. Then they started having races there.”
“My Dad still did some races when my older brother, Jason, started
racing go-karts. I can remember going to some races with them
when I was not quite old enough to race. I started racing when I
was seven. My Mom and Dad were supportive of my karting, and my
Dad was very supportive!”
“When I grew up racing, my brother was always involved in racing, too,
and I kind of looked up to him. He was always really good and I
was always out to prove I was as good as he was. In karting I was
always in a lower division and then we finally raced together in sprint
cars. That was kind of fun to race together with my older
brother, but that wasn’t usually something my Dad liked, but…..”  Photo credit: Shawn Payne/ IRL
Travis raced go-karts for about twelve years and said, “I was pretty
gung-ho about racing then but was never able to race as much as I
wanted because my Dad had a business to run. I was part of the Ohio
Valley Karting Association when I was growing up. We didn’t really
travel around too much, mostly just in Ohio and Indiana.”
There was one advantage that Travis did have, his own personal
track. “The family track [G & J Kartway] started in the
60’s. I remember that in ’68 and ’69 they had the IKS Grand
Nationals. Our track was known for its high-banked Monza turn at
the end of our straightaway. That isn’t there anymore just
because so many people were having accidents. But we hosted many
national races. Tony Stewart raced there. I think my Dad
said Jeff Gordon has, but I don’t know for sure. When Memo Gidley
lived in Indianapolis and raced Champ Cars, he used to come out to our
track all the time. He said our track was one of his favorite
tracks. It is so tight. It is not big, wide and open, so you
really have to drive the track. It’s a half mile road course.”
In 1991 and 1995 Travis did have first place finishes at the World
Karting Association (WKA) Summer Nationals. Then in 1997, he
recorded a first place finish at the WKA Grand Nationals.
While Travis did his karting mostly in the summer when school was out
when he was growing up, during the school year he also had an interest
in sports. “I got into wrestling in 7th grade because I was small
and wasn’t going to be a basketball player. I weighed about 80
pounds. My brother didn’t wrestle, but some of my friends did and
I thought I’d try it out.” In high school, when he was a
sophomore, he was on the football team as a running back. But, as
he said, “I didn’t weigh that much and I got crushed. I didn’t do
any more of that!” He did stay with wrestling, however, and
placed sixth in the high school state tournament.
With high school coming to an end Travis wasn’t sure what he wanted to
do. He loved racing, but there was the issue of whether or not to
go college. So he went to see the wrestling coach at Miami (Ohio)
University. As he said, “I talked to the wrestling coach at
Miami, and although I didn’t apply he got me in.” The next thing
Travis knew he was on the Miami wrestling team.
When he went off to college, as Travis remarked, “I kind of stepped
away from racing for a bit.” But being a member of a racing
family it was never far away. Travis went on, “My Dad was
involved in an Indy car team back in ’97. He and Tom Kelly kind
of started out at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. My Dad bought
a Dallara chassis but didn’t have an engine and Tom Kelly had an engine
and no chassis. So they got hooked up and they got Mark Dismore
to drive it. They were going to have another driver drive also,
but he didn’t pass the rookie test.”
“But this driver was running Formula Atlantics and SCCA and asked my
Dad to come in and help him out a little bit. That got my
brother, Jason, involved in racing Formula Atlantics. And when he
got a new car [the next year, 1998] I drove the old car.”
“The Formula Atlantic car was different. It’s a much bigger car
and you have aerodynamic down force with the wings. You can drive it a
lot harder. It really sticks, unlike a kart, which won’t stick.
So it was kind of hard to get that feel for the Atlantic and so much
down force.”
Travis ran in the SCCA Formula Atlantic Series in 1998 and 1999, and
had a second place finish in each of those years. He made the
point of adding, “I raced at Indianapolis Raceway Park in a road
race. I wasn’t the best, but definitely got experience.”
Regarding one of his second place finishes he noted, “That was actually
in the rain.” And as an after thought he added, “So I have raced
in a Formula car in the rain!”  Photo credit: Shawn Payne/ IRL
During his college years money and time were always an issue.
Still not able to race Formula Atlantic as much as he would have liked
he added, “I only raced about five times a year. I never did the
run-offs because I never did enough races to do that. Doing
Formula Atlantic cars in SCCA you didn’t get a chance to race too
often. Or if you wanted to race often you really had to travel
around a lot.” Travis was forced to be a fast learner.
In 2000 Travis made another big racing move – to sprint cars on
dirt! “We wanted to race a little bit more often and race a
little bit closer to home. The sprint car cost was also a little
bit less than the Formula Atlantics. My brother had raced sprints
about a year or year and a half by then when I started racing
sprints. He got a different car and I jumped into the old car
that he had been running and I started out in that.” [Photo rt., Travis after 2005 Texas win]
“They have a ton of tracks in Indiana. So we raced at places like
Lawrenceburg, Gas City, Worthington and Parigon, Indiana. Parigon
was where I raced my first race. Those were mainly local tracks, and not USAC. So every track
would have a race on Friday night or on Saturday night. I did
race some USAC races but not most of the time.”
“My first year I really didn’t race too much. 2001 was my really
my first year to race a lot. I had a steel block 410 engine that had
about 700 hp The horsepower to weight ratio for 700 hp was plenty
enough! The Formula Atlantics ran only about 240 to 250 hp.”
“It was a really big job to adjust to a sprint car on dirt. That
was because to drive a sprint car you drive it off your right foot, not
really the steering wheel. If you want to turn more you just give
it more throttle. If there was a cushion on the high side, I
loved to try to run that. I always thought that was the fastest way
around. Sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn’t. It
depended on what the bottom was doing. Dirt tracks will change
from the beginning to the end of the race. And sometimes on a
race weekend there won’t be a cushion. It will be totally slick
so you may not be able to run up high.”
“The 3-4 years I raced at Lawrenceburg I finished in the top ten in
points every time. And I didn’t really run in every race.”
[Travis won feature event races there in both 2002 and 2003. He also
qualified fifth for a USAC Indiana Sprint Week feature at Lawrenceburg
Speedway.]
By the end of 2003 Travis knew where wanted to go next. He had
heard about the Menards Infiniti Pro Series. “When my Dad
first started on Indy cars one of the engineers had some type of auto
shop in Indianapolis. I think my Dad called him and wanted to
know about the Pro Series that started in 2002. Then we got a
hold of the Sam Schmidt Motorsports team manager at the time, Michael
Crawford, and I went in there and talked with them trying to find out
what they were about and what the Series was about. We were able
to set up a test out in Las Vegas in December with Sam’s team.
The next year, 2004, we did another test at Kentucky. It was kind
of like a month before my first race I think. I was just
patient. It was a new car for me. I worked away at the
speed and I just listened to Sam. I tried to show some maturity
and I was quick. And when Arie Luyendyk Jr. left Sam Schmidt
Motorsports and went to a different team [AFS Racing], I just kind of
jumped in his seat.”
After winning the pole and race at Homestead, Travis has gone on this
season to also take the pole at Phoenix and Texas, as well as win the
Texas race. He qualified second fastest at the IMS Futaba Freedom
100 and at Nashville. He has led the most laps of any driver this
season, 154. Travis has been the Series points leader a number of
times during the season, but is currently 3rd, four points behind his
teammate, Jaime Camara, and 40 behind the leader Wade Cunningham. 
Regarding Travis’ Sam Schmidt Motorsports team he has only
praise. “I’m really comfortable and confident with the people
that are working on my car. Actually, the people that did my
first test and my first three races are the same people who are on my
car now. They know how I like to drive. I have a lot of
trust in those guys so I don’t over push the car when I know they’re
doing their best to work on it. We have good chemistry. I
know them and they know me” [They are chief mechanic, John Roof, Jr.,
mechanics Mike Meyer and Steven Kisner, and engineer, Blair
Perschbacher.]
And about his teammates, Jaime Camara and Chris Festa, “They are real
competitive. Chris Festa is real tough and especially really good
on road courses. He’s actually helped me on road courses because
he’s looked at our data to see where I’m off compared to him. And
visa versa on ovals.”
Travis Gregg ended this part of his story with, “This is actually the
first season that I’m running every race. I never did that in any
other series before.” The results show that he is taking full
advantage of this opportunity.
Today Travis is back at the Kentucky Speedway and it is the first
anniversary of his stunning Pro Series race qualification at this
track. Yesterday he did it again! Travis qualified fastest
once more, with a 187.962 mph, and sits on the pole for today’s
Bluegrass 100 race. His teammate, Jaime Camara, qualified
second. See the adjoining fromthetrack.com story, “Gregg will run
from the pole in Kentucky – Again.” Look also for our story on today’s Pro race results.
This is the second of a series of three stories about Travis
Gregg. The first, “Meet the Two Travis Greggs,” appeared on July
12. In today’s story you have now met the Travis who is the fast,
winning race car driver. In our final story you will meet the
other Travis Gregg, the one we think is on his way to becoming a
significant marketing brand name.
[For more about Travis Gregg see his official web site: www.travisgregg.com]
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