NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: The Slowing Of Speed
Scott Speed is making a new start with a part-time team…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted February 02, 2012   Charlotte, NC
Scott Speed intends to run a partial Sprint Cup schedule in 2012. (Photo: Getty Images)
It was time, Scott Speed reasoned, to slow down and take a new approach to his racing career.

After a tumultuous – and ultimately contentious – run with Red Bull Racing and a 13-race season last year, Speed has landed with an emerging team, Leavine Family Racing.

Owned by Texas-based building contractor Bob Leavine, the Ford team is located in Concord, N.C., in the shop that once housed Sprint Cup champion Alan Kulwicki’s operation.

The part-time team plans to run 15 Cup races this season, with its first events scheduled for Texas and Richmond in April.

The Leavine team hopes to eventually become a full-time Cup operation, and it also is building cars for Leavine’s 22-year-old son, Michael, who plans to run six races in the Automobile Club of America series this year.

“We want to try to grow it,” Speed said. “We want to set ourselves apart from the other small teams. We want to be professional and have nice-looking cars and do the job on the weekends. So far, I’m overly impressed with how Bob has set this whole program up.”

Speed, 28, says the team plans to avoid the start-and-park option.

“You can certainly make more money doing that, but Bob wants to do it the right way,” he said. “We want to be professional about it. We’re going to have all our stuff right. We want to represent our brand.”

Speed said the team’s planning for the new season involved picking and choosing from a lineup of options.

“When you’re looking at buying race cars, you have to have particular cars for the superspeedways and road courses,” he said. “We thought it would be more in our control to do road courses than superspeedway stuff, although you have a chance to get a really good finish at both. But with the road courses, you control more of your own destiny.

“We’ll start with Texas and run a lot of the mile-and-halfs and the two road courses.”

And he’ll take his shots where he can get them, Speed said.

“If you’re struggling, it’s silly to disrespect or piss people off,” he said. “You have to choose your battles. If we’re having a great weekend and we’re running well, I’m going to push and do whatever it takes to get that good finish. We’re going to do what we can and do it right instead of trying to do a lot.”

Veteran crew chief Wally Rogers will be in charge of the team.

Speed, who raced in Formula One but detoured to NASCAR and has run in all three national series, hasn’t gotten the stock-car results he hoped for, but he said he has a realistic attitude.

“That’s life,” he said. “Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t. I think I was unlucky. You take the good with the bad.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 30 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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