MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Ever since his second top-10 finish in the last four NASCAR Xfinity Series races, Kaz Grala has been asked one very important and recurring question by his band of fans and supporters.
What’s next now that your sponsorship money has run dry at Fury Race Cars?
As of Thursday night, Grala still didn’t have a defined answer to that question, but he was certainly still reveling in the highs of what he and his father Darius – who co-owns the chassis manufacturer-turned Xfinity team with Tony Eury Jr. and Jeff Fultz – accomplished in just a matter of weeks.
“Man, this last month has been so good to us, even despite how crazy it was to make it all happen,” Grala told SPEED SPORT. “This was the least I think I’ve ever slept in a month before, but the payoff has been so worth it. It’s been busy for us. We had to scramble just to figure something out, and this all came together in a way that I would have never dreamed it might. It’s been really, really fun and we’ve already had some solid success.”
Grala lost his ride with JGL Racing, which was originally planned to be a full-season effort, on May 15 and then saw his father, Eury and Fultz build an Xfinity Series team in less than two weeks with help from crew chief Shane Wilson and many of the crew members that had worked on Grala’s team at JGL.
The new team scored a top-10 finish on debut at Charlotte Motor Speedway during Memorial Day weekend – leading Darius Grala to proclaim, “We won!” on pit road after the event – and then followed that up by leading laps and being in position to win at Michigan Int’l Speedway if the rain that eventually ended the race had come a few minutes earlier.
Kaz Grala finished 12th in the Irish Hills after coming from the back twice and circled that afternoon as a watershed moment.
“Michigan was a very, very busy race for me,” Grala recalled. “We calculated after the race that I passed 76 cars in that one, which is crazy when you think about it. We started in the rear because qualifying got cancelled, drove all the way up to eighth in the first stage and then had an uncontrolled tire penalty that set us back for a second time and we had to charge through the field again.
“I made it back to fifth in the second stage and got some points again, and then drove up and took the lead from Elliott Sadler at the start of the final stage before we got shuffled back a bit and it got really crazy at the end,” Grala added. “I was praying for rain while we were out front, but couldn’t be too disappointed because we showed everyone what we were capable of and they knew we were there.”
Since joining Fury Race Cars, Grala has improved his average finish from 22nd to 12th and finished on the lead lap in every race he’s run, including the last race of the quartet at Iowa Speedway on Father’s Day, where Grala replicated his 10th-place performance from Charlotte in May.
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