With three races left his inaugural Chase for the Cup appearance, Brian Vickers starts the final stretch at a track where he holds the qualifying record.
That was three years ago but, unfortunately, the No. 83 Red Bull Toyota driver hasn’t been able to crack the top-10 on the grid or in a race at the Texas Motor Speedway since. In fact, Vickers’ average start at Texas is 21st and his average finish is one place worse, 22nd.
“Although all of the finishes don’t show it, Texas really is my kind of track. It’s wide with multiple grooves. You can move your car around to find where it works the best,” he said. “The important thing is to just be there at the end. Because it is such a fast track and the race is bumper to bumper, it is easy to get caught up in a racing mistake.”
Vickers’ top result at the 1.5-mile oval is a 12th as a rookie in 2004, while the best he’s done with Red Bull so far was a 14th two years ago in his first race there with the team.
And after looking to be a lock for a top finish last week before getting caught up in a penultimate lap crash, being there at the end of Sunday’s Dickies 500 is no guarantee of a good result.
After seven races, Vickers is 12th in the Chase standings and mathematically out of contention for the title, 556 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson. He is yet to crack the top-10, although he has come tantalisingly close in his last two starts. Vickers finished 13th last weekend in Talladega and just missed the top-10 a week before that with an 11th in Martinsville.
Just to add a little extra incentive in Texas, the No. 83 Red Bull driver only has three chances left to ensure he doesn’t go into the record books as the only driver to make the Chase and then not score a top-10 result in the championship playoff.
'The race is bumper to bumper, it is easy to get caught up in a racing mistake' – Brian Vickers
Although he hasn’t burned up the track in Texas, Vickers thinks it's a great place to drive and he always looks forward to going back to the Lone Star state. With the team planning to try some “new stuff” with the car’s set-up, he’s hoping that something good happens.
As for Vickers’ team-mate Scott Speed, he’s heading into his second career Sprint Cup start at Texas this weekend hoping to close a 135-point gap to 35th in owner points in the final three races. The No. 82 Red Bull Toyota driver failed to qualify for the April race in Texas after he missed the cut by a scant 0.321 miles per hour and ended up with the 45th best time.
His only previous start at the Texas Motor Speedway came in his third career Sprint Cup race last November, where he started and finished a modest 33rd. He’ll have to do better this time around if he wants to make up ground to 35th, but he’s coming off a solid drive in Talladega that should help him carry momentum into Texas.
Last weekend, Speed saw a possible top-10 slip through his fingers when Kurt Busch lost control on the penultimate lap of the Amp Energy 500 and sent the No. 82 spinning. At the time Speed was running behind eventual sixth-place finisher Johnson. Instead of a top result, he ended the race down in 27th after not being able to complete the final lap.
Keep up with Brian and Scott at the official Red Bull Racing Team site.
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