Championship 4 run may have saved Carson Kvapil's NASCAR career

By the numbers, Carson Kvapil didn't have overtly impressive 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series campaign. 

But when everything was on the line — including his 2026 NASCAR future — the second-generation NASCAR driver pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made the Championship 4. 

How Carson Kvapil saved his career

It was a postseason performance that may have saved his budding career, as it was announced after Kvapil qualified for the championship race that he would be full-time in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series in 2026, potentially driving for multiple teams. 

Still, a full season in 2026 is a worthy deal for a 22-year-old driver who showed flashes of greatness in 2025. 

Kvapil finished in the top 10 in fewer than half of the races in 2025 — 14 top 10 results in 33 starts — but ran much better than the raw numbers indicated. Chief among those races was the March 1 race at Circuit of the Americas, in which Kvapil led seven laps and battled his JR Motorsports teammate Connor Zilisch for the win until a flat tire relegated Kvapil to a 23rd-place finish. 

Unfortunately for Kvapil, a 13th-place finish in the championship race at Phoenix was nowhere near good enough to win the title. Kvapil finished fourth in the championship standings. 

While the championship result wasn't what Kvapil and the No. 1 team wanted, it was still a solid rookie season — and one that, in the end, could one day be credited with saving his career.