After stepping into the breach when Brian Vickers fell ill with blood clots last month, time has not been on Casey Mears' side – though he knew things wouldn’t be easy as he got up to speed in the No 83 Red Bull Toyota.
'My goal is to win races and sit on poles and be competitive every week' – Casey Mears
“The biggest thing we have to do is obviously get there quickly,” he said. “It’s mid-season, so we don’t have six or eight races to get things sorted out and get on down the road, we have to do it now.”
“My timeline is tomorrow. I’ve been in this sport for eight years now and although everything is new around me I’m not new. My goal is to win races and sit on poles and be competitive every week.”
The main thing the team is doing is trying to implement scenarios that work well for Mears and figure out how they can co-exist with what the team was already doing with Vickers behind the wheel.
Getty Images/Red Bull Photofiles
To the casual observer, it can’t seem that figuring out a 3,400-pound stock car with few aerodynamic elements really could be all that
difficult.
Essentially, the goal is to find balance in the car where the front and the rear slide at the same time. Once that happens, the next job is to look for more grip, which typically is found in one end of the car and then the driver and crew have to figure out how to match the new–found grip on the end of the car that didn’t have it. That process gets repeated and repeated in practice to increase the total grip which, if all goes to plan, makes the car faster on race day.
“In an hour-and-a-half practice and the limited amount of tires and everything else that we get, really what we are looking for on race day is just a good race balance,” he said.
“If the front end is not working real well and we realize that it’s going to be hard to make an adjustment to make the front better sometimes what we will do is take away from the rear to get a good balance. Now, obviously taking away grip is maybe making the car a bit slower but, if it races better, you increase your chances of doing well.”
One thing that would help speed the process would be a test, something that is in the works for the next few weeks. The series’ testing ban does not allow teams to run at NASCAR sanctioned tracks, but the team could find a venue to compile some data that will help it pinpoint the differences between Mears and Vickers. It’s all about throttle, steering and brakes and the multitude of permutations of the three that determine driver preferences.
“They are three separate components but when you start throwing them together, it can drastically change the way the car reacts and responds,” Mears said.
“Now if we did a test at a track that they’ve gone to before, we could overlay the data and get an answer on that fairly quickly.”
While Mears isn’t where he wants to be yet, there has been progress. He finished 23rd on the 2.5-mile triangle Pocono Raceway and crossed the line on the lead lap, something he hasn’t done since he replaced Vickers starting at Dover three weeks ago.
Getty Images/Red Bull Photofiles
Team-mate Scott Speed was three spots better than Mears, coming home 20th. The result kept the No 82 Red Bull Toyota driver 26th in
points, 152 outside the top-20.
While not the way he wanted to do it, the experience with the No 83 crew so far has also given Mears an insight into Vickers as a driver
rather than a friend.
“With Brian coming to this program so early when it was a new company, it is really built a lot around him, the things that he likes and that work good for him,” Mears explained. “So, although we are good friends, I’d never really worked with him before and I am learning a lot of things about his approach to the sport and how he likes his cars.”
For more on the Red Bull Toyotas go to redbullracingusa.com or you can follow Scott Speed on Twitter.
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