Kevin Cywinski 2005 season preview

Kevin Cywinski Covers All Bases To Prepare For 2005 Season

Eyes Running ASL And Elite Series Races, But Not Going Over The Wall

LAKEVILLE, MN (March 16, 2005) -- Kevin Cywinski has carved out a pretty good career in racing for himself. He has three ASA National Tour championships to his name and a ton of short track victories from all over the place. He's not done racing yet, but Cywinski is a master at his craft and he doesn't need as much preparation to go racing and winning as the young kid in the sport.

So this off-season, Cywinski's main focus has been helping out his young teammate, 19-year-old Joey Miller, get ready for a full-season attack on ARCA. Cywinski has led up the Country Joe Racing team that fields cars for Miller in the short track ARCA events and provides the pit crew for Miller's #9 car.

"I'm basically acting as a driver coach for Joey," said Cywinski. "I'm trying to keep him focused. I also work on blending both teams together [Miller's speedway ARCA cars are fielded by Hagans Racing in Indiana]. The pit stop crew comes out of our shop. Those guys have been practicing three times a week and they are ready to go and really fired up."

They've even tried to draft Cywinski into joining them going over the wall -- with little success.

"They've tried to put me in a few positions," said Cywinski. "I can use the one pump jack to get the car up, but it's everything else that the jackman does that I'm not as good at. I'm not too coordinated, actually. Now they understand why I drive and they do what they do."

And Cywinski will do plenty of driving in 2005, but he's just not sure yet what he'll be racing and when his events will be.

"We are still figuring out my schedule," said Cywinski. "There will probably be a few NASCAR Elite Series races that we enter with me driving. I'll do some ASL races too I'm sure, but there won't be anything that I run full-time this year. Our main focus is on Joey's program right now."

The April 30th ASL series opener at I-70 Speedway (MO) might be one of the races that Cywinski heads to. It's an off-weekend for ARCA, so racing in that event is a possibility since it won't conflict with any of Miller's events.

"We haven't penciled that race into our schedule yet," said Cywinski. "But we would be in good shape to go to that. We have eight cars ready to go -- four of mine from last season and four of Joey's -- so even if there was a race tomorrow, we'd be ready for it."

So without a racing home, Cywinski has been trying to cover all bases. He and his crew have been hard at work in the shops of Country Joe racing getting everything prepared to go to the track.

"I've been working on a little bit of everything," said Cywinski. "We are doing the short track ARCA cars for Joey, putting back together our Snowball Derby cars and going through our NASCAR Elite Series cars. It's been about three years since we have really gone through those cars, because we haven't raced them much. We are also switching them over to ABC bodies."

Cywinski might not know when his next race is, but he does know when he'll be back to the track. He'll be at Nashville Superspeedway on March 26th for Miller to return to the site of his first ARCA start and victory, which actually came on the same day last August.

Country Joe Racing, with Kevin Cywinski and rookie Joey Miller, is Minnesota's #1 professional racing organization. For more information on the team, please visit www.countryjoeracing.com.

-cjr-