The dream of making the Chase may have come to an end for Brian Vickers who was taken to hospital Wednesday evening complaining of pains in his chest.
Doctors discovered several blood clots in the veins in his leg, which if they break free and reach the lungs cause pain and making breathing difficult. He is currently being treated with blood thinners at a hospital in Washington, D.C, while medics investigate the cause of the condition.
He will miss this Sunday's Autism Speaks 400 at Dover International Speedway, something that might put him too far behind in the points to recover.
Red Bull Racing general manager/vice president Jay Frye spoke to reporters in Dover Friday morning and indicated that it’s too early to say when Vickers might be back in the No. 83 Red Bull Toyota.
“His health is our main concern: he's a long-term player with Red Bull Racing, we're a long-term player with the sport,” Frye said. “There's no hurry for him to get out. He feels fine, but he knows there's a problem and he knows he has to address the problem.”
Vickers is 20th in the standings after 11 races, 160 points out of a top-12 spot that would put him in the Chase. He was coming off a top-10 finish in Darlington where he posted his best career result at the track in the Sprint Cup. Casey Mears will sub for Vickers in the No. 83 Red Bull Toyota.
‘Brian feels fine, but he knows there's a problem’ – Jay Frye
With Vickers on the sidelines, all eyes will be on team-mate Scott Speed to step up after starting the 2010 season with a string of good results and then fading. Speed sums up his situation frankly: “We just need to stop having bad races.”
The No. 82 Red Bull Toyota driver put up three top-20 results in the first four races and flirted with a Chase berth early, but five finishes of 21st or worse in the next seven starts pushed him well out of the top-12.
While Speed admits to being a little bit taken aback by the success his No. 82 Red Bull Toyota team had early in his sophomore campaign, he thinks it’s simply a reason to try harder now that the results haven’t been as good.
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“I think everyone on the team puts more pressure on themselves because we know we can do it and it’s just a matter of execution now. I put a lot of pressure on myself anytime I am doing anything, whether that’s on the racetrack or on the golf course and that doesn’t change much,” he explains.
“As a team, for sure you can sense that there’s pressure on us to continue having the success we did at the beginning of the year.”
Speed’s goal before the season began was to finish 2010 in a top-20 points position overall and that hasn’t changed. Going into Dover, he’s 26th with 1091 points and just 67 outside his target. As a comparison, Speed was 35th at the same time last season with 756 points and 375 outside the top-20.
Now, is the team’s improvement in 2010 a sign of maturity? Absolutely not, says Speed: “I’ll never be mature, that’s just ridiculous, but certainly as a team we are growing together and learning about each other and becoming more productive and efficient at what we are doing,” he says.
“Almost having two top-10s in the first 10 races on legitimate race tracks was surprising for us but we just raised our expectations after that and we’ll keep learning and digging.”
‘I’ll never be mature, that’s just ridiculous, but certainly as a team we are growing together’ – Scott Speed
Unfortunately, Speed is looking to get back into the top-20 in Sunday’s Autism Speaks 400 at a one-mile Dover International Speedway that simply has not been kind to him in the past. He isn’t alone in experiencing Dover difficulties as the high banking and concrete surface combine to create a track known as the “Monster Mile.”
“We were horrible both times we went into Dover and it’s by far our worst track,” Speed admits. “It’s something [crew chief] Jimmy [Elledge] and the guys have been working on really hard all year actually to get it better and see if we can try something different when we go there. It’s certainly the track we are not looking forward to the most and that we are the most uneasy about.”
In his two and only trips to Dover last year, the best Speed could manage was a 25th in the fall race after engine troubles ended his spring race in Delaware after just 118 of 400 laps. He finished 37th.
But don’t ask him why he can’t seem to find a good pace: “I have no idea why we struggle there. I won my only truck race there and it’s been my worst Cup track, so it’s just a tricky place I guess.”
Stay on track with the latest from NASCAR.com, or go to the home of the Red Bull Racing team. You can also follow Brian Vickers and Scott Speed on Twitter.
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