By Dave Rodman, NASCAR.COM
January 17, 2012

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Travis Pastrana struggled a little while climbing the steps into his coach at Daytona International Speedway at a recent Rolex Series sports car test, the legacy of a badly broken right foot and ankle he suffered in a crash in last summer's X-Games.

But the broad smile he broke into when describing how he felt while driving the Ferrari 458 he'll share with team owners Michael Waltrip and Rob Kauffman in the upcoming Rolex 24 at Daytona was unmistakable.

"Five months out and I'm just really getting back walking, and not walking well," Pastrana said. "But I can drive OK so I guess that's what counts."

Getting laps in the Ferrari is part of Pastrana's program of four-wheel seat time he'll get this season, including the full K&N Pro Series East and seven races, at least, in the Nationwide Series for Pastrana-Waltrip Racing that Pastrana said will be sponsored by Samsung Boost Mobile.

"I just gotta get seat time," Pastrana said. "There's just no substitute. You run the bias plies [tires used in K&N] as opposed to radials but getting time in the car, figuring out how to make passes and when to be aggressive and when not to be aggressive and more than anything, learning how to talk to the team so they understand what I mean and to try to get a feel to run these cars quick."

Pastrana's first stock car test this year will be on Feb. 7 at Gresham Motorsports Park in Jefferson, Ga., site of the June 9 K&N race.

"I would have liked to have gone a little sooner but I wasn't exactly sure on the ankle or the schedule," Pastrana said. "I just wrote the check for the K&N Series because we were talking to different sponsors and doing different things and I just said, 'I need to get in the car and I need to test' because the biggest priority to me is seat time."

Pastrana's Nationwide debut, originally set for Phoenix in February, has been delayed.

"We'll just watch the progress through the K&N in the first part of the year," Waltrip said of the former action sports star who has no plans to compete on motorcycles. "I would hope by maybe April or May -- maybe Richmond time -- he's ready to race Nationwide.

"I think he was well on his way to being ready last fall, with the way he ran in the K&N car and what he had learned."

Then came the 2011 X-Games. Pastrana said the recovery from the injuries he suffered last July are the worst he's gone through "since I basically shattered my pelvis and broke my back when I was 14."

Pastrana said his therapy is primarily based on regaining flexibility in his ankle.

"Just this last week I started working on getting a little strength in there," Pastrana said. "My trainer said, 'Your right foot's your paint brush and right now you can't even stand on it.' Honestly -- for driving, not riding -- it feels really good in the car so that's not too huge of a concern.

"However I want to get it as strong as I can because the stronger you are with everything the less liability you have and the better you're gonna be."

Even though Pastrana raced at Phoenix last season in the K&N car, by the end of April he will have raced twice at Richmond in the K&N Series.

"It's definitely the smarter way," Pastrana said. "I've always been overenthusiastic and underprepared and we found even just running the K&N Series last year that we're gonna need a little more preparation and I think that's good.

"I really need to just get in there and figure out when I can push and when I can't push and I think the K&N Series is a great start for that."

Pastrana made four K&N starts last season between the East and West Series. He started 10th at Phoenix but crash damage knocked him into a 25th-place finish. His best East Series finishes were a pair of 22nds, at Iowa and New Hampshire. He did finish a promising sixth in his stock car debut in the 2011 Toyota All-Star Showdown, formerly a K&N Series special event held in January.

"It's a challenge -- the biggest challenge I've ever had," Pastrana said. "Everything that I've done has been, 'Attack harder and you'll find time.' With NASCAR that's not so much the case. My best finish was the first race, where we really just sat in the back, stayed out of trouble and was able to push towards the end."

Mike Greci, who was crew chief for Ryan Truex's consecutive K&N championships in 2009-2010, will head Pastrana's K&N team. Waltrip said they'll consider working Pastrana's Nationwide schedule around the K&N schedule "so Greci would be the same voice in his ears, no matter what he's racing."

Waltrip said PWR is still actively seeking sponsorship for the 14-race K&N program but with Pastrana's help they were committed.

"It's an expense that Travis and Pastrana-Waltrip feel like is necessary in order to give him the best opportunity to go out and be competitive when he runs his first Nationwide race," Waltrip said.

By Dave Rodman from NASCAR.COM

No trademarks or copyrights

By Tes Sewell
ESPN.com
 

While most of the motocross community was focused on the runaway win of Ryan Villopoto in Anaheim this past weekend, the country's most well known motocross star was a whole coast away in Daytona, Fla. Travis Pastrana switched two wheels for four and joined many of the world's top sports car drivers at the 'Roar Before the Rolex 24' -- a practice and test session for the upcoming 'Rolex 24 at Daytona' later this month.

"Getting to drive at Daytona was so cool. I won my first pro supercross race here, and I've always dreamed of driving here," Pastrana said. "When I hit the high banks for the first time, it was 'holy cow - here we come!' It was also my first time in a Ferrari. I can't complain. I spent last night watching footage so I can find a little more speed."

Pastrana will be putting in his inaugural ride as part of the Michael Waltrip racing team in their racing partnership with Italian racing team, AF Corse. Pastrana is linked to Waltrip as part of Pastrana/Waltrip racing and was destined to run his first season of Nascar Nationwide events last year until famously crashing at X Games Best Trick, effectively ending his X Games run and his heavily-promoted Nascar debut that same weekend.

The Rolex 24 is, as its name would suggest, is a 24-hour long race held at the legendary Daytona Motor Speedway. Teams of drivers must race -- and keep their car intact -- for a full 24 hours, switching up drivers as the race progresses. Teams must have a minimum of two drivers and in the case of the AF Waltrip effort, the team consists of four race ready pilots: Pastrana, road racing veteran Rui Aguas, Waltrip's team partner Rob Kauffman and Waltrip himself. Michael Waltrip is of course no stranger to Daytona Motor Speedway, having won the Daytona 500 on two occasions.

The course utilizes most of the Daytona high-banked race course, with a short infield road section and a back stretch chicane to slow the cars down before turns three and four. Pastrana's team is driving a race equipped Ferrari 458 GT and at least three of the four drivers admitted that the car was going to take some getting used to as Waltrip pointed out pre-test: "In this type of racing, you have to find a happy medium for all the drivers. I've never driven the latest version of the 458 so instead of worrying about learning the track and car, which is what I usually do when I race a Ferrari, this weekend I'm just focused on the car."

The AF Waltrip team will have some serious competition in the heavily contested GT class. "I have some pretty simple goals this weekend," Pastrana said. "I need to learn the track, learn the car and work hard with the other guys on pit stops exchanges. It might look easy on television but getting drivers in and out of the car quickly takes some practicing. The real key for me will be to learn how to drive the Ferrari without burning through the tires. We have a lot of work to do."

Can wait for this one to come out!!!  Gotta love Travis Pastrana and the crew!

Travis Pastrana and the whole Nitro Circus crew are back together in a truly LEPICDARY (epic n' legendary) action packed 3D film. Expect the impossible, ridiculous, insane, hysterical, and purely awesome! Coming to you in 3D, it will feel like you are riding shotgun with the crew.

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It would be NASCAR's dream race in many ways: Ricky Carmichael, Travis Pastrana, James Stewart on the grid of the Daytona 500, legions of 18-to-39-somethings huddled around televisions and smart devices, breathlessly watching this triumvirate of motocracy as it prepared to compete in Sprint Cup's premier event. Oh, the brand new merchandise they would be wearing. Oh, the loyalty for their new sport of choice bursting from their young and impressionable hearts as they follow their motocross/supercross/action sports heroes loyally to their new vocation.

It might happen, Carmichael said. But it won't happen anytime soon. And he says that with the best perspective of any of his fellow two-wheel legends (Pastrana has a background in rally and some developmental series experience). Four years into his NASCAR career, the 31-year-old motocross legend says that the conversion to stock cars is incredibly difficult, too difficult to be rushed if success is the ultimate goal. With Pastrana's NASCAR debut now delayed until next season after breaking his foot and ankle in an X Games "Best Trick" crash in July, and Stewart even further away with unfinished supercross and motocross business (he says he wants to race bikes for at least the next three seasons) after signing with Joe Gibbs Racing's motocross team this week, this story, Carmichael said, will have to wait even longer because of the "steeping learning curve."

"It would be cool to race him [Stewart] and Travis and all those guys," Carmichael said in a phone interview. "It's definitely a cool story. Not too many people can say they've raced in two completely different sports together. As cool as it would be, I think it would be a long way down the road. I have three years under my belt and it takes a long time."

Elementally, Carmichael said, conforming a motorcycle to the driver's will is easier than the same task with a stock car. And it doesn't matter the quality of the will or the talent.

"Man vs. machine, it's probably 70-percent-to-80-percent man, 20 percent machine in motocross and that's backwards in car racing," said Carmichael, who has a record 15 championships and 150 wins combined in motocross and supercross. "Obviously, these guys are very skilled, they're the best at what they do in stock car racing, but it's hard to make lemonade out of lemons in car racing.

"There's so many more things you can do on a motorcycle to manipulate the motorcycle. It's two less wheels to worry about, less moving parts to worry about. You can manhandle the machine more. Car racing, there is just a lot more things happening underneath the hood and how things work and people setting the car up. These motorcycles, a lot of them, you can hop on and win on, which in car racing -- it's not really like that. It's about how it's set up and how good your equipment is."

And even if a driver is willing to log the hours to learn such a skill, Carmichael said, NASCAR's testing limitations prevent them from doing so.

"It's so much different than motocross because he's not going to be able to go out there and outwork everyone, as maybe his strategy was in motocross and supercross," Carmichael said. "That's what my strategy was. That was no secret. That was how we won, outworked everybody. It's tough, so you have to find ways to be better, better yourself other than testing."

Carmichael, who said he is friendly with his fellow Floridian but hadn't discussed NASCAR with Stewart, said the 25-year-old would be wise to concentrate on one regimen at a time, especially if his stated goal is to surpass Jeremy McGrath's all-time supercross wins record of 72. Stewart is currently third all-time with 42 (Carmichael is second with 48) after consecutive injury-marred seasons. Stewart, however, seems eager to dabble, immediately.

"I look at the future, and I think car racing is the future, sure," Stewart said. "But I have a lot of things I want to accomplish on the motorcycle, and the first thing I want to do is win a championship for these guys. ... I'm going to get my feet wet with that [car racing]; in fact, in a few weeks, I'm going to test one out. But for now my main focus is to win a championship on this motorcycle."

Carmichael, who expects to return to Turner Motorsports in the Truck Series and run selected Nationwide events next year, said he had a "three-year plan" when he signed with the now-defunct Ginn Racing in 2006 as he prepared to transition from arguably the greatest motocross career in the sport's history to NASCAR. Carmichael said he thinks "NASCAR would be pumped if I was in there, either Nationwide or Sprint Cup. I think they'd be happier than me racing in Truck, for sure," but added that he doesn't want "to commit career suicide by moving too early. The people I lean on say do not move up too early."

He has 18 starts in the developmental K&N East Series, seven in ARCA, 65 in the Truck Series and seven in Nationwide since 2008. Carmichael was fourth in the ARCA-opener at Daytona this season and fourth in the Trucks race at Talladega last week, tying a career-best. JGR appears to have Carmichael on an expedited schedule -- he is scheduled to test a Late Model within the next few weeks and hopes to make spot starts in the K&N and Nationwide Series in 2012 -- which Carmichael finds unwise.

"For someone like me or Travis, and James, we don't know what is really going to happen," Carmichael said. "I do know this: Yeah, we want to be in Sprint Cup. It would be great if I could make it there. That's what I want to do and I won't be happy until I get there. It takes time to do it right. The worst thing you can do is rush into this and think you're going to set the world on fire.

"Everyone wants to rush into the Nationwide Series. It's the first thing they want to do. I totally disagree with it. I think you need to do some Late Model racing or East Series and then to Truck and then move on up. I really do. Basically, everyone racing in the Nationwide Series was awesome in truck. Hell, everybody in Cup Series has won a bunch of races in the Nationwide Series. There's a reason they race on Sunday."