After the restrictor plate opener in Daytona, the second stop of the NASCAR Sprint Cup season at the Auto Club Speedway usually serves as the gauge for the rest of the season.
If that’s the case, things certainly look pretty good for Red Bull Racing, after both cars raced exceptionally well, led laps and finished in the top 12 in Fontana, California. Red Bull Toyota teammates Scott Speed and Brian Vickers even battled hard with each other for position late in the Auto Club 500 before coming home 11th and 12th, respectively.
Speed’s No. 82 Red Bull Toyota led the race under caution with about 58 laps to go as rain moved through the Fontana area, causing a yellow flag. But the downpour didn’t get bad enough to force NASCAR into red-flagging the race, which could have delivered a win if the event wasn’t restarted.
“I swear we almost pulled a Joey Logano there," Speed said, referring to Logano’s maiden Sprint Cup win in a rain-shortened race last June at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. "I would have laughed my ass off if we’d won that race under rain like he did. We put ourselves in the best position every single time the rain was coming.”
"Awesome weekend… I'm really, really happy." –Scott Speed
The Fontana result builds on Speed’s strong 2010 debut in Daytona a week ago where he finished 19th. He is now 15th in points overall, just one spot behind Vickers in the championship standings.
“Awesome weekend,” added Speed, who qualified 13th for the Auto Club 500. “I mean, I can't say enough. I didn't think we would run as good as we did, honestly. We legitimately ran in the top 10 for the last half of the race, once we got track position. For this being pretty much the beginning of my second year here, I'm really, really happy.”
The two-mile, D-shaped oval Auto Club Speedway serves as a better indicator of performance than Daytona because it reflects the intermediate tracks that dominate NASCAR and offers more of a challenge to the drivers than the foot-to-the-floor restrictor plate race at Daytona.
Vickers’ No. 83 Red Bull Toyota moved forward fast from his 23rd spot on the grid, breaking into the top 15 with a handful of laps in the books and cracking the top 10 by lap 15.
Getty Images/Red Bull Photofiles
For much of the race, Vickers was the best of the Toyotas in the field, running in the top five. But his chances of a top-five finish went out the window when NASCAR delayed its decision to go to yellow when the rain appeared, forcing Vickers to run longer on older tires than he wanted.
“They should have thrown the caution because it was raining pretty hard; they didn’t and we lost a lot of ground with everybody short-pitting,” he explained. “They had new tires – that pretty much got us behind [for] the rest of the day.”
To make matters worse, an error on pit road saw the team make the wrong adjustment to the car, which made it more difficult to drive as the race continued, as Vickers explained: “We were just way too loose.”
When the final round of pitstops were done under caution and the race went back to green with 21 laps to go, Vickers found himself back in 15th place, looking to drive his way back to the top 10.
With about 15 laps to go, Speed and Vickers fought a running battle on track for ninth, duelling for the rest of the race. Each dropped two spots by the end as they took the checkered flag still fighting side-by-side. In the end, Vickers certainly wasn’t as happy with the result as his teammate: “It was disappointing – I think we had a top-five car,” he said
“It was disappointing – I think we had a top-five car.” –Brian Vickers
A day earlier, Vickers also saw a top-five result slip from his grasp in the Nationwide Series' Stater Bros 300. Driving the Braun Racing Toyota on Saturday, Vickers took an eighth place finish after chasing fellow Toyota drivers Kyle Busch, who won, and eventual fifth-place finisher Joey Logano, for most of the race before another pitstop mistake ruined his chances.
“We were probably the third or fourth-best car. We didn’t really have much for those guys [Busch and Logano],” he said. "There at the end, we didn't take tires and probably should have. We lost a lot of spots because of it.”
On the other hand, Speed’s pit crew was impeccable in the Auto Club 500, giving their man a faster car as the race wore on and helping him post his second-best career finish in Sprint Cup competition.
“We started the race way too tight. We were gambling for the track to kind of do what it did last time, which is fine,” said Speed, whose best Cup result so far is a fifth in last April’s Aaron's 499 at the Talladega Superspeedway.
“We took an educated guess at it and we missed and we were able to regroup. We loosened the back up and the speed came back and we started flying again.”
For more, visit NASCAR.com, go to the home of Red Bull Racing Team, or catch up with Brian on Facebook.
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