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Martinsville: Red Bull NASCAR Sprint Cup Race Preview
Who: Scott Speed (82 Red Bull Toyota), Brian Vickers (83 Red Bull Toyota)
What: Tums Fast Relief 500 (Sprint Cup)
When: Friday-Saturday, Oct. 23-25, 2009
Where: Martinsville Speedway, Martinsville, Va.
+ MARTINSVILLE: FAST-FORWARD A YEAR
While Scott Speed still has plenty of work to do in the car owner standings, he ranks 35th in driver points. And of those first 35, only three made their race-day debut at a short track.
One is Mark Martin, whose first start came in 1981 at North Wilkesboro. Another is AJ Allmendinger; he debuted in 2007 at Bristol. And then there’s Speed, who, after a life spent snaking around the road courses of the world, raced a Sprint Cup car for the first time at NASCAR’s shortest track — .526-mile Martinsville Speedway.
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Driver No. 82 finished 30th last October at Martinsville. He kept the car off the wall, out of the way and learned early on the value brakes there. Start No. 2 came in March, and strategy put Speed on point for the first time in his Cup career. He led once for 12 laps and was one of only four drivers to lead a green-flag lap.
He was running ninth on lap 70 when Kyle Busch lost control of his car underneath Speed in turn three. Both went spinning, with the No. 82 hitting the outside wall to damage the left rear and side. Speed went to the garage for repairs and finished 39th.
"As long as we stay clear of the 18 (Busch) all weekend, we should be all right," Speed joked.
"We race as hard as we can," he continued. "The reason we don’t run into each other is because if we run into each other, that person is going to run back into you. I don’t try to move anyone out of the way unless I really have to because I know eventually that’s going to come back to me.
"Certainly, Martinsville is one of those tracks where tempers can flair and things can get wild. We’ve been competitive every time we’ve been there, so hopefully we can salvage a good finish out of it. We need to be in the top 35, and we’re just now starting to get some big chunks of points back."
The No. 82 Red Bull Toyota sits 36th in the car owner standings — 98 points out of the top 35 with five races remaining.
+ RECENT RESULTS SAY BV’s DUE
Until the words "mathematically eliminated" finally enter the ears of Brian Vickers, driver No. 83 refuses to give up on winning the Sprint Cup championship. But Vickers is a self-described realist, and even he knows he’s longest of long shots considering 10 drivers and 485 points sit between him and leader Jimmie Johnson. For Vickers, championship aspirations have morphed into a finish-as-high-as-possible-inpoints approach.
"We had some meetings at the shop and talked to the guys, and at this point, it’s just about having fun," Vickers said. "Let’s just go out there and try to win races. Have an absolute blast the rest of the year, no matter what happens. Win as many races as possible.
Run as best as we can and finish as high as we can in the points. Where we finish is where we finish. Just enjoy it and try to learn something for next year."
Pride’s on the line, too. At the season-ending Sprint Cup banquet Dec. 4 in Las Vegas, NASCAR will honor the top 10 drivers from the Chase. BV ranks 12th in the standings — 113 points behind 11th-place Denny Hamlin and 144 behind Carl Edwards in 10th.
Vickers’ spiral south in the standings continued Saturday night at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Multiple pit stops to repair rightfront and splitter damage put the No. 83 Red Bull Toyota four laps down and 34th at the checkered flag, and that finish followed a 29th at California and 37th at Kansas.
But when the season’s 36 points race long, there’s most always a next week. Sunday’s Tums Fast Relief 500 caps the year’s second visit to Martinsville Speedway.
In March, Vickers was running eighth with 35 laps to go when he reported the right-front tire rubbing. BV stopped for four tires, and as he left the pits NASCAR officials noticed fluid leaking from the car. Turned out it was oil, and Vickers came back in and the hood went up. He returned four laps down in 35th.
Instead of his fourth top 10 in the season’s first six races, Vickers finished 33rd. Overall, Vickers has one top-10 and three top- 15 finishes in nine starts at the track defined by long straightaways, tight turns and heavy braking.
"The important thing about Martinsville is to not overdrive it. Take care of your equipment," said Vickers, who’ll celebrate his 26th birthday Saturday. "Martinsville has all three of the biggest components that these types of cars hate — accelerating 3,500 pounds, stopping 3,500 pounds and turning in a tight radius 3,500 pounds. These cars don’t like that environment."
+ GO FIGURE: PASTRANA TO PUSH THE LIMITS
He’s won four consecutive Rally America championships, nine X Games gold medals and completed the first double back flip on a motorcycle. There’s little Travis Pastrana hasn’t done, except clear part of the Pacific Ocean in a rally car.
In the third edition of Red Bull: New Year. No Limits., Pastrana will attempt to add that feat to his impressive resume Dec. 31. Before the clock strikes midnight in the East, Pastrana will jump his rally car off the Pine Street Pier onto a floating barge anchored in Long Beach’s Rainbow Harbor. The goal: to shatter the existing mark of 171 feet and establish a new world distance record.
And just to add to the pressure, the event will be televised live on ESPN following the Chick-Fil-A Bowl (approximately 11 p.m. ET).
"Flying over the water in a car and landing it onto a floating barge will push the limits of anything that I have ever executed in my career," Pastrana said. "Live events are always difficult and more entertaining — both for the fans and the participants — and so many factors play into the success of this jump. I live for this kind of excitement."
Fellow Red Bull athletes Robbie Maddison and Rhys Millen rang in the past two New Year’s Eve celebrations in Red Bull: New Year. No Limits. In 2007 in Las Vegas, Maddison launched his motorcycle a world record 332 feet, 7.5 inches. A year later, Millen successfully completed the first-ever back flip in an off-road truck at the Rio Hotel & Casino, while Maddison soared 10 stories and landed his bike on the replica Arc de Triomphe in front of the Paris Las Vegas.
PaddockTalk Perspective
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