Catchfence

Who: Scott Speed (82 Red Bull Toyota), Brian Vickers (83 Red Bull Toyota)
What: Price Chopper 400 (Sprint Cup)
When: Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009
Where: Kansas Speedway, Kansas City, Kan.
Results: Scott Speed (start 10, finish 27); Brian Vickers (start 12, finish 37)

+ HEADACHE, HEARTACHE IN THE HEARTLAND

For Brian Vickers and the No. 83 team, there really is no place like home after the
dismal day they suffered at Kansas Speedway.
“
I just want to get out of Kansas. It’s been a long weekend,” said Vickers, a Chase
contender who finished a disheartening 37th in Sunday’s Price Chopper 400.
Vickers’ No. 83 Red Bull Toyota started tight and never got any better. Then BV
went spinning all by his lonesome through the frontstretch grass on lap 126.
Finally, the engine quit for good after he completed only 208 of 267 laps.

To sum it up, Vickers and the No. 83 team whiffed big time in the third race of
NASCAR’s postseason.
“
We started out a little tight and got worse and worse. We never could get a
handle on it,” Vickers said. “Then I was at the top of the track trying to chase grip
and got into the marbles and lost it. That was completely my fault, and I feel bad
about it. I hate it for the guys. We just weren’t as good as a whole as we needed
to be. Just absolutely weren’t. The engine put us out of our misery.
“
We were really looking forward to getting to a mile-and-a-half track and having a
good run. We just didn’t.”

If there’s any good news to come out of dropping to 12th in the standings and
losing 99 points on first place — Vickers is now 250 points behind championship
leader Mark Martin — it’s that the Sprint Cup Series heads to Auto Club Speedway
this weekend. The first of Vickers’ six poles this season came in February at the 2-
mile track, and his average finish in the past five races there is 10.2.
“
Anything is possible,” Vickers said. “I don’t think we’re out of it yet, but (the
Kansas finish) definitely doesn’t help. It hurts quite a bit.”

Though he made ARCA and Camping World Truck starts on the same day at
Kansas in April 2008, Scott Speed hadn’t driven a Cup car on the 1.5-mile oval
before Friday.

Speed admitted last week he remembered little about the track he raced at 18
months earlier, but it all quickly came back to him. He was strong in the opening
practice and qualified his No. 82 Red Bull Toyota in 10th — the sixth top-10
starting position of his rookie season.

A day after finishing eighth in the Nationwide Series event, Speed ran a clean race
and completed all but one lap before finishing 27th.

The No. 82 ranks 36th in the car owner standings — 111 points out of the top 35
with seven races remaining.

+ UP NEXT

Pepsi 500, Sunday, Oct. 11, Auto Club Speedway

- Red Bull Racing Team, Press Release