Red Bull driver Cole Whitt has been making waves in the Camping World Truck Series in his rookie season with one pole, three top-10s, and 30 laps led in five starts. With one-fifth of the 2011 schedule complete, he’s fifth overall in the championship with 175 points, just 12 out of the top spot. But how’s he really doing? Brian Vickers has the goods in his latest blog post...
It’s hard for me to say how good Cole is because I have never raced with him, but he seems to be doing a really good job.
As he grows and learns — and he’s been learning a lot about the sport the series and the cars — the transition from what he was racing in the K&N Pro Series to trucks is a decent step and the transition to Nationwide from trucks is a significant step and then the one from Nationwide to the Sprint Cup is going to be a tremendous amount more.
The steps are huge when you are moving up from karts all the way to the Cup Series and every time you get to the top of one, the next one gets bigger. The level of competition not only increases but it grows exponentially throughout the different series.
When you think about it, the number of guys in a late model race who can win is smaller than the amount who can win in the truck series, which is then smaller than the number who can win in the Nationwide Series.
The same thing applies to the Cup Series: By the time you get to there, obviously you have a lot more experience but most of the guys there have won races or championships at some other level. I bet most of the Cup guys who have raced for a significant amount of time could go out and run trucks for the first time and do really well. They’ll usually win or get pretty close to it.
Right now, I think Cole doing the right thing. He just needs to focus on where he’s at and do the best he can while learning as much as possible and carry that into the next series and then carry it all into the Cup Series.
Next up for Brian Vickers and the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is the Darlington Raceway in South Carolina on May 5
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