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Texas: Red Bull NASCAR Sprint Cup Race Preview
Who: Scott Speed (82 Red Bull Toyota), Brian Vickers (83 Red Bull Toyota)
What: Dickies 500 (Sprint Cup)
When: Friday-Sunday, Nov. 6-8, 2009
Where: Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, Texas
+ IN BRIEF: THE RED BULLS AND TEXAS
Scott Speed, driver, No. 82: The third start of Speed’s Sprint Cup career came at 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway. Last November, Speed started and finished 33rd.
He missed last April’s race but has two Camping World Truck starts to fall back on for experience. In 2008, Speed finished 26th in the spring and rebounded with a 10thplace showing in the fall.
Brian Vickers, driver, No. 83: Vickers’ claim to fame at TMS is the track qualifying record when he took the pole with a lap of 196.235 mph in November 2006.
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His best overall finish (12th) came his in debut in April 2004, while his best finish with Red Bull Racing Team (14th) came in April 2007.
Entering Sunday’s Dickies 500, he has three consecutive finishes inside the top 18, including a 16th last April.
+ ADDED MOTIVATION
More than six years later, Brian Vickers is still searching for redemption for the one that got — well, "taken" — away at Texas Motor Speedway.
Flash back to March 29, 2003 and the O’Reilly 300 Busch Series race. A 19-year-old Vickers, driving Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 25, led the field to a restart on lap 179 of 200 but was pinned behind several cars running on the tail end of the lead lap.
When the green flag waved, Chad Blount’s car — the one in front of Vickers — got loose and slowed.
Vickers cut to the inside to avoid contact and moved forward only a few feet, but that was a definite no-no in NASCAR’s eyes, as rules forbid cars from passing to the left before the start-finish line. Officials black-flagged Vickers, and after leading 87 laps and looking well on his way to his first NASCAR victory he later crashed and finished 25th.
"We had the race won today, and it got taken away from us," he said that day. "The fire inside of me to win a NASCAR race is just that much stronger."
Sixteen races later, Vickers did win. In fact, he won three times in six events and went on to win the 2003 series title to become NASCAR’s youngest champion at age 20.
Vickers has raced a Nationwide car at Texas only twice since then — both in 2008 for Braun Racing. He’ll return to Braun’s No. 32 Toyota for his final Nationwide start of the season in Saturday’s O’Reilly Challenge. In 16 starts, Vickers owns one pole, seven top-five and 11 top-10 finishes. He last raced Oct. 16 at Charlotte and finished fourth.
+ SAND & SOAP BOX IN TEXAS
The surface will be asphalt, not sand. And Todd Rogers will be strolling, not setting or spiking, at Texas.
The Red Bull athlete and professional beach volleyball player will be a guest of Red Bull Racing Team, taking in the sights and sounds of Sunday’s Dickies 500. Rogers (right) and teammate Phil Dalhausser are most noted for their gold medalwinning performance in the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. They’re also the reining FIVB world and 2007 AVP Tour champions.
Joining Rogers out of the Red Bull stable will be Team Ironheade. Made up of driver Sean Feeley and mechanics Andrew Cook, Luke Nalker and Christine Phelan, the Bay Area-based Team Ironheade won the Sept. 26 Red Bull Soap Box race in Los Angeles. Their human-powered craft reached 46 mph through L.A.’s downtown streets, and the team was awarded the most points for showmanship.
PaddockTalk Perspective
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