Kevin Conway

Nationwide Series

Its a shame that Kevin Conway is at the bottom of the Gibbs roster.  A hard worker who has be relentless in testing for the organization and a contributor to the success of Stewart, Hamlin and JJ.

Kevin has got the talent to be a steady competitor in the Busch Series but lack of true race time has allowed his fellow teammates to get the drop on him.

Charming and mature Conway might be on his way to other organizations, which isnt always a bad thing.  He can race and with his maturity level, he is a great addition to any organization.  The stable can only hold so many and sadly, there might not be room at the inn known as Joe Gibbs Racing much longer

Kevin Conway has been one of the hardest-working and most highly motivated drivers in NASCAR over the last four years. His name may have been relatively absent from the weekly race results, but behind the scenes, Conway ran at full-throttle, day in and day out. In the corporate board rooms of present and potential NASCAR sponsors, the 28-year-old from Lynchburg, Va., has worked feverishly in hopes of winning the kind of opportunity that finally presented itself at the outset of 2007. The prize: the title of young development driver at Joe Gibbs Racing as pilot of the No. 18 Z-Line Designs Chevrolet at eight NASCAR Busch Series events this season.

Armed with a marketing and public relations degree from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Conway owns a unique appreciation for and ability to relate on a high level with the corporate decision-makers of America and the world. Add to that a racing resume that features his vast array of experience in everything from AMA Motocross, the World Karting Association, Legends cars and USAC Midgets to Late Model Stocks, the American Speed Association and ARCA, to NASCAR’s West Series and Busch Series, and the breakthrough of a racing lifetime is now a reality for Conway. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to have personal endorsements from the likes of Ernie Irvan, Lake Speed, Darrell Waltrip and Humpy Wheeler along the way.

“What’s gotten me to this point is a lot of determination and relentless focus on what it takes to compete in the NASCAR Busch Series, both on and off the track,” said Conway, who at the outset of 2007 had six Busch races to his credit but served as a test driver for various NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series teams and as a Richard Petty Driving Experience instructor, both of which helped Conway log thousands of laps at NASCAR tracks across the country. “I haven’t been able to benefit from family money to fund my career, so I haven’t had a lot of help getting my foot in the door at a lot of places. But I have driven a lot of equipment in just about anything I could get my hands on just so somebody, somewhere, will take notice.

“I know I have the ability to drive and succeed at the (NASCAR) Cup level. This opportunity with Joe Gibbs Racing and Z-Line Designs is a huge step in that direction for me. It more than makes all the hard work over the last several years seem worth our tireless efforts. Now, the job will be to make the most of it, to prove ourselves on the race track, to win races, and to run competitively in the Busch series on a consistent basis before taking that next competitive step.”

As motivated as his behind-the-scenes efforts have been over the last four years, Conway’s efforts on the race track this season are driven by a mantra that has been deeply embedded in his brain since he first learned it from Irvan, one of his first racing mentors: “Success is something that comes from the hard work you do after the hard work you’ve already done.”

Conway’s relationship with Irvan dates back to the early 1990s when as a young teenager, Conway used to hang around the Robert Yates Racing shop where his uncle, Brett Conway, was head engineer on Irvan’s No. 28 car. It was during those years that Kevin Conway also began working on Waltrip’s Western Auto Busch car. All the while, the veteran racers followed the successful karting career of the young Conway, and kept an eye on his progress and offered advice and encouragement in the many years since.

In 1994, Conway became the youngest national champion in the history of the Legends series at the age of 15. It seemed only a matter of time before he would become a championship contender at the highest levels of the sport, but the next 12 years saw him take a most unconventional path on the road to racing prominence as he hopped from team to team and series to series in search of that one, big break.

“I was very fortunate to get a lot of good advice from a lot of good people,” Conway said. “I was very fortunate to get hooked up with a guy like Ernie Irvan. He’s been like a crazy uncle to me. I learned a tremendous amount from him, but it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes I’d think this guy is really difficult to work with, but then I’d move on to another situation and realize how much I had learned from Ernie and how it was not that difficult at all.”

Conway’s first major stock car experience came by way of a pair of ARCA events for Irvan and George deBidart’s team in 2002. He opened with an impressive top-five qualifying effort at Atlanta, where he went on to lead a majority of the race before mechanical trouble sent him to the sidelines with 20 laps remaining.

His second ARCA start in 2002 saw him start at the back of the pack when qualifying was rained out at Charlotte (N.C.). But he drove like a longtime veteran and brought home a seventh-place finish. Also during that year, Conway tested extensively for Johnny Benson’s No. 10 and Ken Schrader’s No. 36 NASCAR Cup teams, adding a wealth of big-car experience at numerous tracks.

Over the following four seasons, Conway got an occasional taste of Busch series competition for the first time while enjoying success in spot appearances driving in numerous other series. He won the USAC Midget Craftsman 100 at South Boston (Va.) Speedway in 2004, driving for Pro-Xtreme Valvetrain Racing. He also made his NASCAR West Series debut that year, driving Irvan’s No. 28 car to the outside pole and a fifth-place finish at California Speedway. In 2005, he turned in several impressive performances in the No. 25 BWB Racing USAC Silver Crown Series car.

In the meantime, he turned in modest results in cameo appearances driving Busch cars for Bost Motorsports in 2002, Curb Racing in 2005, and for Scott Glynn and David Carver in 2006.

“It’s been interesting, to say the least,” Conway said. “Everyone knows it’s so difficult to get into a groove when you’re having to jump from one thing to another. But that’s what I’ve had to do, and when I’ve gotten good equipment, I’ve been fortunate enough to get good results. Other times, I’ve had such horrible luck.

“This opportunity with Joe Gibbs Racing and Z-Line Designs is just the thing to hopefully bring a little consistency into my life on the race track. I’m so grateful for the opportunity, and I really want to get the kind of results I know I’m capable of putting up race after race.”

Conway, born April 15, 1979, is single and makes his home in Cornelius, N.C.