Vickers ready to move

He’s got some momentum going into the Dan Lowery 400 on Sunday.

Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

RICHMOND, Va. — The old racing adage says you are only as good as your last race.

If that is indeed the case, Brian Vickers and the Red Bull Racing team are as good as they ever have been together.

Vickers avoided all of the late-race mayhem last week at Talladega to finish fifth in the Aaron’s 499. It was his best run with Red Bull since finishing fifth in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte nearly a year ago.

It doesn’t matter to Vickers that the style of racing at Talladega differs greatly from every other Cup track except Daytona. He’s banking on taking the momentum generated in Alabama with him into Saturday night’s Crown Royal Presents The Dan Lowery 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

“Yes, I think you can take momentum into anywhere — momentum is momentum,” Vickers said. “No matter what track you are going to, it is the same. We had our best run of the season last weekend in Talladega, so I think that will definitely carry over to Richmond.”

It appeared Richmond would be one of Vickers’ better tracks early in his Cup Series career. He started from the pole there in his first attempt in May 2004 and finished eighth. But his next six starts on the three-quarter-mile track have produced finishes outside the top 20.

For a driver in his sixth Cup season, it’s easy to forget that Vickers, 24, is one of the younger drivers in the series — of the top 43 drivers in the points standings, only Kyle Busch, David Ragan and Reed Sorenson are younger — and still learning.

Yet Vickers isn’t thought of in the same way. Perhaps because he has experienced so much in such a short time.

He was 17 when he made his Nationwide Series debut, and was three weeks past his 20th birthday when he won the 2003 Nationwide Series championship. That same year he drove his first Cup race for Hendrick Motorsports.

But his tenure with Hendrick was uneven, and he made the move to the upstart Red Bull team in 2007. Even his only Cup win was a challenge emotionally.

As a lame-duck driver for Hendrick in 2006, Vickers was running third on the last lap of the fall race at Talladega when he made contact with teammate Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr., spinning out the leaders. He not only won by knocking out two drivers battling in the Chase, but also by crashing the most popular driver at his most popular track.

Things did not improve in his first year with Red Bull as the team struggled to get its new Toyotas up to speed. Vickers failed to qualify for 13 of the 36 races last year, but he enters Saturday’s race tied for 15th in points, 35 points out of 12th, the final Chase-eligible position.

Secure in the top 35, Vickers no longer has to worry about missing races. The focus is race day, not qualifying, and his results show the difference.

“This team has come a long way since Daytona and a tremendous way since last season,” Vickers said. “I feel like we have made a lot of gains that we are aware of, and we probably still have many we need to make that we are unaware of. Red Bull Racing is still a young team, and we are learning every week. We have been growing exponentially in my mind, though, as far as performance is concerned for over a year now.”

Richmond is an important stop on the schedule. The Cup series returns to RIR in September for the final race before the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup begins the following week. With limited testing available, teams fighting to make the Chase will be working extra hard on finding a setup that will work Saturday and again in September.

“We are putting a lot of effort into it,” Vickers said. “It is very important to come back here in the fall and have a good run. Obviously, because it is the last race before the Chase and we hope we will be in contention when we return. Now is the time to start planning for it.”