"Persistence pays off"

Team Red Bull experienced highs and lows in its first NASCAR season. Brian Vickers, the man with the ‘83,’ analyzed his year in the Toyota Camry in an interview.

On your website there’s a drawing of a frog being swallowed by a heron. The motto reads ‘Don’t ever give up’ – yet the amphibian still manages to strangle the bird with its tiny free arms. In what sort of situations do you find motivation cartoons like these inspiring?

This cartoon could’ve inspired a lot of situations that we had this year! It was a tough year working with a new team and a new manufacturer, so you could say we were struggling a lot and battling many things that were trying to bring us down. The biggest struggle for us was being outside the top 35 in Owners Points and having to qualify for races every weekend on speed.

In retrospect, what successes from the past year can you thank for a fighting spirit like this one?

Racing at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in May was symbolic of this cartoon. We had one of the fastest cars on the track and were in contention to win the race, but lost our power steering. We didn’t give up though, and our persistence paid off with a fifth-place finish – our best finish this year.

Twenty-three races, five top-10 finishes, one top-five finish, leading 106 laps in 12 races, and earning 2.1 million dollars in prize money: the naked figures from last year’s season. What moments left the deepest impressions on you?

Missing the Daytona 500, the first race of the season, that was a bad impression. Good impressions were finishing 10th at California Speedway in our first race of 2007, and having a great race car and finishing fifth despite power steering problems at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

During the season you switched Crew Chiefs. What are the differences Randy Cox has made?

Doug Richert was a great Crew Chief and I enjoyed working with him, but we both knew that some changes needed to be made, so Randy Cox was brought in as Crew Chief for the last four races of the season. I really admire Randy because he’s really passionate about any job he takes on. He’s a very determined, smart guy, who really knows his race cars. He takes the time to think his decisions through and he helped us finish the year on a positive note by making the last four races.

In 2007 you finished as the top Toyota a total of nine times. Next year, Joe Gibbs Racing is switching to Toyota engines, so NASCAR champion Tony Stewart will also be driving under the Toyota name. How will that influence and affect what you’ve got on your program?

Having a team the caliber of Joe Gibbs Racing with three drivers who’ve won races and championships collectively will definitely help Toyota’s overall engine program, which will in turn help us as a team. You won’t see a lot of information sharing between JGR and other Toyota teams; that happened this year with us and the current Toyota teams. We’re all competitors at the end of the day, so we’re all trying to beat each other. If you learn some great new information that gives you an edge over your competitors, that’s not something you’re going to share.

In the 2008 season, all races will be run with the Car of Tomorrow (COT). Please tell us the current status of your COT program and what work still needs to be done.

We struggled with our COT program this season, but that wasn’t a surprise, considering we were a new team and were alternating between racing two completely different cars – the current car and the Car of Tomorrow. We struggled on short and flat tracks with the COT, so those are two areas we need to improve on during the off season. When we raced the COT at Talladega, a speedway, we were pretty decent, so we might be stronger at those tracks. We’ll be testing a lot this off season, so we hope to see our COT program improve across all types of tracks.

In between all this testing you probably won’t have much spare time for your hobby: you’re a book worm. Your literary recommendation for the coming weekends we’ll have to spend without NASCAR-racing broadcasts?

I read mostly non-fiction. If I pick up a magazine, it’s usually Business Week. One of my favorite non-fiction books is ‘The Art of Happiness’ by the Dalai Lama. One of my favorite fiction books is the ‘Count of Monte Cristo’ by Alexandre Dumas.