Archive for the ‘Vickers season’ Category

Video courtesy of NASCAR.com

If team building is a step-by-step process, there’s no question the step Brian Vickers and his Red Bull Racing Team took in 2009 was a giant’s.

Vickers had never finished better than 15th in Cup points, never won more than two poles in a season or scored more than 10 top-10 finishes.

In 2009 Vickers’ career year came in only Red Bull’s third year of NASCAR existence, and his sixth full season in the league. The 2003 Nationwide champion scored his second career Cup victory, had six poles and logged a career-best 13 top-10 finishes.

And, he made the Chase for the Sprint Cup, getting to eighth before dropping back to 12th spot. But despite not finishing better than 11th, twice, with six results of 20th or worse in the 10 Chase races, Vickers had no doubt in assessing his campaign.

“No matter what happened [in the Chase] it’s hard to argue that it wasn’t a successful year and I still stand by that,” Vickers said. “We set our goals out at the beginning of the season to sit on poles, win races and be in the Chase. Racing for a championship within the Chase was not necessarily a goal we had, but obviously when you show up at the race track you want to win races and championships. That goes without saying, especially with the competitors that we are.

“Looking back upon the whole season, everything that we’ve gone through with Red Bull since its inception, I’m really proud of this year and proud of everybody at Red Bull for what we’ve accomplished.”

Surrounded by veterans

Vickers said maybe the season’s highlight was working with veteran crew chief Ryan Pemberton.

“Ryan obviously brought a lot to the team, brought more good people onboard,” Vickers said. “He’s brought a lot of knowledge and excitement and enthusiasm. I’ve really enjoyed working with Ryan. He’s very passionate about what he does. He’s good at it. He brought some knowledge and stuff to the team that didn’t exist before.”

What could go wrong, did

Two of the team’s five DNFs, four of them accidents, occurred in the Chase. But it was the arcane that truly blotted Vickers’ season.

“We were one of the best teams on the race track the 10 races leading up to the Chase. We had just about everything possibly go wrong that could go wrong in the Chase. We lost a solenoid. I’ve never heard of that. I talked to the engine builder and he said he’s seen it happen once in 20 years.

“We ripped a shock mount out of a chassis at California. When was the last time you heard of that happening? I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t. Nonetheless I look back on it and it was a good year for us. We learned a lot from it, grew a lot as a team, accomplished all of our goals and still learned a lot in the Chase.”