Change marks the start of the second half of NASCAR’s regular Sprint Cup season for Team Red Bull.
With Brian Vickers out for the season, Team Red Bull swapped crew chiefs and some supporting crew earlier this week to give his replacement, Casey Mears, a familiar face on the timing stand this weekend in the Gillette Fusion ProGlide 500 at the Pocono Raceway.
Jimmy Elledge, who worked with Mears when he broke into NASCAR with Chip Ganassi Racing, moves over from Scott Speed’s car to lead the activity in the No 83 stall. The No 82 crew will now be led by Vickers’ crew chief, Ryan Pemberton.
Mears ran well under Elledge, taking two poles – one at the Pocono Raceway in 2004 – and four top-five finishes.
And, going back to something familiar certainly helps Mears with the acclimatisation process after coming into a new team on a moment’s notice after Vickers fell ill with blood clots last month.
“It does make some sense if you look at it from Jimmy and me having already worked together. It’s going to speed up that process,” Mears said. “It’ll be strictly, ‘what can we do to get this car to go faster?’ instead of trying to learn how to work with each other.
'Pocono is certainly a different one for us' – Scott Speed
“This weekend is going to be a refresher course, for sure, just trying to get caught up to speed. It does cut out a lot of the middle stuff that you have to go through with a new driver–crew chief relationship – weed out a lot of those unknowns from the start.”
The first race at Pocono Raceway marks the move into the second half of the 26 races that decide the 12 drivers who will go for the championship in the 10-race Chase for the Cup. At that halfway pole, Speed is 26th overall, only 113 points outside of the top-20. Mears is not a factor in the points after joining the series 12 races into the season.
And it’s also not a bad idea to try something new at a track that has delivered good results for Red Bull in the past. Pocono has been Vickers’ second-best track over the years and the team also scored their second-best combined finish there in 2008 when Vickers came home second and then-Red Bull man A J Allmendinger finished 12th.
Speed started 37th both times the series raced in Pennsylvania last year due to rained-out qualifying sessions. He finished 32nd in June before improving that result by nine spots two months later when the series returned in August. For his part, Mears has a pole and three top-10 results at Pocono in 14 starts.
The 2.5-mile (4km) Pocono track has three distinct turns with differing degrees of banking between three asymmetrical straights. The result is an irregular triangle layout that challenges teams and drivers.
“Pocono is certainly a different one for us, but one of the great things about NASCAR is that we go to so many different racetracks,” said Speed. “It makes it unique to tune for because you typically have to give up a little on one corner to gain in another.
“It’s probably a bit more challenging for the crew chiefs and the teams to get the cars likeable for the drivers.”
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