As NASCAR enters the second quarter of the 2010 season, there’s no doubt that Brian Vickers will be looking to turn his luck around.
Apart from a brief encounter with the top-12 a few weeks ago, Vickers simply hasn’t been able to put together a streak of good finishes. In his last three races, Vickers found trouble in the form of blown tires in both Phoenix and Texas before he got sucked into a nine-car wreck last week in Talladega. The end result was finishes of 37th, 38th and 29th in his last three races and a tumble down the points standings to 25th.
But when the chips were down last autumn and he needed a command performance at the Richmond International Raceway to make the Chase for the Cup, the No. 83 Red Bull Toyota driver came through with his best-ever finish at that track. Vickers finished seventh in the Chevy Rock & Roll 400, which was good enough to snatch the final Chase berth by just eight points over fellow Toyota driver Kyle Busch. It was the first Chase appearance for Red Bull in only its third year of Sprint Cup competition.
Vickers’ goal for 2010 was to get into a Chase spot early and stay there, so the team would be ready to compete for the championship when things got serious. With a quarter of the races gone this year, things are not exactly going according to plan.
The good news is that Vickers’ 29th last weekend in Talladega really didn’t reflect the kind of race he had. He led laps, challenged at the front, and looked to be a car to beat before he came out of a late crash with a broken radiator that ultimately ended his race early.
The bad news is that despite the clutch performance last year, Richmond has not been kind to Vickers over the years. His only other top-10 at the three-quarter mile, D-shaped oval was an eighth back in 2004. Apart from that, he’s finished the rest of his 11 starts in the bottom half of the score sheet, with an overall average finish of 26th, which makes a good finish in Saturday night’s Crown Royal presents the Heath Calhoun 400 a bit of a tall order.
Although the results haven’t been there, Vickers has started in the top-10 four times in Richmond, including twice on pole, and he holds the raceway’s qualifying record of 129.983 miles per hour, which he set back in 2004.
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Unlike Vickers, teammate Scott Speed will be looking to continue his improvement over last year after leading the team in points and finishes for most of this season. At the one-quarter mark, the No. 82 Red Bull Toyota driver sits 21st in the standings with 949 points. At the same point last season, speed was back in 36th spot with 607. He ended the 2009 season 35th overall.
In the first quarter of the 2010 season, Speed outqualified his more experienced teammate four times and finished better in the race on five occasions.
But, like Vickers, Richmond also has not been Speed’s best track, with neither of his two Cup starts there being anything to write home about. Both ended with him crossing the line in the mid-30s.
He will be looking to buck that trend as he makes his 50th start in the Sprint Cup this weekend.
Stay on track with the latest from NASCAR.com, or go to the home of the Red Bull Racing team. You can also follow Brian Vickers on Twitter.
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