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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Q&A - Brian Vickers
Brian Vickers was the last driver to make it into the Chase for the Sprint Cup...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted September 25, 2009   Dover, DE
Brian Vickers is currently eighth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points standings. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Brian Vickers used a late-race hot streak to make into the 2009 Chase for the Sprint Cup by a mere 8 points, the narrowest margin ever.

In his first appearance in the Chase and the first for his Red Bull Racing team, Vickers enters the AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway 90 points behind leader Mark Martin after finishing 11th at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last weekend.

Vickers talked about the Chase and the Monster Mile Friday morning at the one-mile oval. Excerpts follow.

Can you talk about the ground you have to make up in the Chase?
About 90 points right? We obviously wanted to do better last Sunday, but I think we were still pleased with the effort we had. Not satisfied, but pleased. I think we kind of said to ourselves in Loudon, if we come out of there with a top-10 or better, then that’s probably a decent day for us. We ended up 11th, but considering all the problems we had through the weekend.

Friday, the engine pretty much didn’t run the entire practice, so we lost two, two-and-a-half hours or whatever that practice was, to the competition. Once we lose that on a race weekend, you really never get it back. It’s hard to overcome that. Not impossible, but it’s difficult. Saturday, we tried some stuff. Some worked, some of them didn’t.

And come Sunday, I felt like we had a decent car, probably not a car to win, but at least top-10, if not a top-five car, and then we had the problem on pit road. We lost a lug nut, and went to last, and came back to 11th.

Considering everything that we had to overcome — even though most of it was our own fault — we still had a decent weekend and good start. Now we’ve got a little ground to make it.

Can you talk about the differences between racing on concrete and asphalt?
Some good, some bad. I guess it depends on how you look at it. It’s the same for everyone no matter what. Concrete seems to be affected less by temperature, by sun, things like that. Qualifying will tend to be, I think, more consistent for everybody depending on the rubber build-up or where that sits. Beyond that, you’ll build rubber on concrete and it will get pushed off a little bit more under caution laps and things like that. It’s a little bit different. I like concrete racing. I really do. I enjoy it here.

Is there anything your teammate can do to help you for the rest of the season and next year?
They can definitely try some stuff and see how it goes. There’s a good opportunity that they find something and it works. It’s not anyone’s fault, but Scott (Speed, teammate) is still learning the tracks. He’s getting ready to go to a track he’s never seen before next week. It’s his first time in a Cup car at Kansas. That’s going to be limited. That’s just the way it is.

As far we’re concerned, the 83 team, I think we just need to continue to do what we are doing. Some of that has been experimenting. Now that we don’t get to test, I think you have to experiment a little bit on the race weekends.

The most important thing in my mind is to know how to control yourself. Know when to stop. It’s okay to start out with something new that you’ve run the (simulation) around the seven-post, you’ve experimented with at home, you give it the best opportunity possible to be good when you unload, but you’ve got to know how to say, ‘Okay guys, throw your hand up. This is not working. Take it out. Let’s go back to what we know.’ And then finish the practice.

As long as you’re able to do that, and you don’t chase it down a path to this black hole where all of a sudden you’re at the end of practice and you don’t have what you need and now you can’t go back to other setups because you don’t have any time left, then I think it’s fine. And we’ve been doing that a lot this season, so we’ll probably continue to do so.


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