After slipping out of contention early on for the Chase title, Brian Vickers and the No. 83 Red Bull Toyota team decided to use the championship play-off as a learning experience. Unfortunately, the team seems to be enrolled in the NASCAR school of hard knocks.
With its first Chase appearance continuing to return disappointing results, what the team learned in a hurry was that the 10-race play-off is a completely different level of competition.
“We definitely needed to be more prepared going into the Chase but we were one of the best teams in the 10 races leading up to it," Vickers said. “Things just turned on us a little bit and the momentum sort of headed in the wrong direction, and we made mistakes. The pressure was high for sure in our first Chase and we learned how to cope with that.”
But they still have some homework to complete; Vickers struggled through another Chase race on Sunday, finishing the Dickies 500 at the Texas Motor Speedway three laps down in 26th place.
Even with another disappointing outing, Vickers still gained 36 points on championship leader Jimmie Johnson, who crashed on the third lap and finished 38th. He also closed the gap to 11th in the Chase standings to 80 points and is still a manageable 121 out of 10th with two races to go.
“Obviously, we would rather be racing for the championship and winning one," Vickers added, "but we are in a position now where we have nothing to lose – we're not going to get any worse in the points. We can only get better and we have an opportunity to just roll the dice and go for it. Whether that’s a set-up or a package we want to try, or gambling on fuel mileage, it’s an open book for us. We can try anything and just try to learn from it."
With only two stops left in the Chase, Vickers is in danger of becoming the only driver to make the championship play-off and then fail to score a top-10 finish. But, after the team overcame a seemingly insurmountable 197-point deficit in nine races just to make the Chase, he’s not about to complain about his crew’s performance.
The outfit hit all of its milestones for 2009 (a pole, a win and making the Chase) but winning the championship was not among them.
“We're very happy with the team we have and as far as I am concerned, we have met or exceeded our goals this year," Vickers said. “Obviously we wanted our performance in the Chase to be much better but some of that has been self-inflicted – mistakes we’ve made – and some of it has just been bad luck. But all-in-all it’s been a good year for us and we’ve grown a lot as a team. I think everybody has done a really good job.”
Bad luck doesn’t begin to describe Vickers’ Chase experience. When something had to go wrong, it inevitably hit the No. 83 Red Bull Toyota outfit. There was the bad solenoid in Charlotte that kept the team out of almost all of the pre-race sessions, a shock mount that ripped out of the car in California, and a penultimate lap wreck in Talladega last week that took him out just as he looked ready to take a top-10 result.
That same Talladega accident also ruined teammate Scott Speed’s run to a top-10 finish, but he bounced back to deliver an 18th place in the No. 82 Red Bull Toyota. The solid run in Texas helped Speed close the gap to 35th in points to 117. He has two races left to earn the place and a starting spot in the first five races of 2010.
For more information, visit the official Brian Vickers website and the official Scott Speed website.
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