Brian Vickers confident he can make Chase For The Sprint Cup in '09

Brian Vickers calls missing 13 races in the 2007 NASCAR Cup season, “probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through in my life.”

Life got a lot easier last season.

Vickers qualified for every race and placed 19th in the standings. A season earlier, when he debuted for the then-brand new Red Bull Racing and with a manufacturer, Toyota, making its entry into Cup, Vickers placed a dismal 38th in the standings and earned just one top-five finish.

Now with a solid 2008 to build on, a second season at Red Bull under his belt and a new crew chief in Ryan Pemberton, Vickers has set the bar higher heading into the 2009 campaign.

“Our ultimate goal is to win championships, and you can’t do that without being in the Chase [For The Sprint Cup],” Vickers said in a recent phone interview. “I think we really need to focus on that, have a smart season, a good season and be in the Chase.”

If Vickers does qualify for NASCAR’s 10-race playoff that determines its series champion, it would be the 25-year-old’s first postseason appearance since the Chase format was adopted in 2004, his rookie season.

Vickers was 15th – three spots off the Chase bubble – when NASCAR’s 26-race regular season commenced at Richmond last September. That won’t be enough to satisfy Vickers in 2009.

“If we can go for a win, great, but I’d really like to be in the Chase,” said Vickers, who spent his first three Cup seasons with Hendrick Motorsports but never made NASCAR’s playoff.

If Vickers does qualify for the Chase, Pemberton will likely have plenty to do with it. A veteran pit boss who spent 2008 calling the shots for David Reutimann at Michael Waltrip Racing, Pemberton takes over at Red Bull for Kevin Hamlin, who spent just one year with Vickers before being reassigned within the organization.

“I got along really well with Kevin actually; I’m so glad that he stayed at Red Bull,” Vickers said. “I think he has a lot of talent, but I think what Ryan brings to the table is probably communication on race day, communicating really well. Kevin is a thinker, but he’s really quiet on the radio, and that’s hard at times; it’s really tough. But he’s really smart.

“Ryan, I think, brings a lot of other things to the table. He’s had a lot of success with the [car of tomorrow]. You look at what he did over at Michael Waltrip Racing and how far along he brought that program was very impressive. … The time I’ve spent with him so far, I’ve been extremely impressed.”

Like Vickers, Pemberton has his sights set on getting his driver and the team its first berth in the Chase.

 “We definitely think we need to be in the Chase, and that's the goal,” Pemberton said. “I think that's something that not only could happen, but it should happen, and we're focused on that.”

In addition to a new crew chief, Vickers will have a new teammate this season in Scott Speed. The former Formula One driver, who ran a partial schedule last season in the Craftsman Truck Series in an effort to hone his oval-track skills, is as different from Vickers – at least in terms of personality and appearance – as Britney Spears and Hulk Hogan.

“I think he’s a smart guy,” Vickers said of Speed. “He seems to be a talented driver, but … he’s out there. He’s worn and said and done some things that were just way out there. I mean, listen, it’s no secret: He painted his toenails on TV. I mean some of that stuff’s kind of shocking to begin with, but, hey, that’s his personality. That’s who he is, and I respect that. He’s just being himself. If that’s his thing, then I’m good with that.”

If Vickers runs well enough to make the Chase this season, he’ll need to improve on his 2008 short-track performance.

In six starts at tracks shorter than a mile, Vickers’ best finish was an 11th in the final short track outing of the season at Martinsville last October.

“We need to keep going in that direction,” he said. “We’ve got to keep working on our weakest spot to really want to go run for the championship.”

In as much as Vickers struggled at short tracks, he excelled at the intermediate tracks. Of his six top-10s, four came at venues between 1.5 and 2 miles in length. Vickers recorded his best finish of the season – a second-place run behind Gillett Evernham Motorsports’ Kasey Kahne -  at Pocono in June.

Vickers notched three top-fives, up from his one in 2007, and scored a pole at Michigan in August.

To what source does he trace his improvements after such a dismal debut season with Red Bull?

“It’s mainly people and not just one person,” he said. “I think that [team general manager] Jay Frye obviously had a lot to do with it because he did a great job and because he runs the entire race team. Any time the general manager role changes, it’s going to change a lot of things, it’s going to affect a lot of things.

“We also had a lot of other new people come in – engineers, crew chiefs – [who] really revamped a lot of the team throughout the organization. And also we had a lot of good people stay, a lot of good managers stay and a lot of hard-working people throughout Red Bull stay. So it was a mix of a lot of things.”

While Vickers was particularly pleased with his intermediate-track effort last year, his biggest letdown of the season came at an intermediate track, too.  He had led four times for a total of 61 laps in the Coca-Cola 600 at 1.5-mile Lowe’s Motor Speedway when a blown tire forced his Toyota into the wall, ended his day before the midway point and ruined a good shot at a win.

In 2007, Vickers led 76 laps in the Coca-Cola 600 before finishing fifth in a race ultimately decided by fuel economy.

“To be honest with you, the 600 at Charlotte has gotten away from me three or four times,” the Thomasville, N.C., native said. “I can’t really explain why. I can’t really explain why we run so good, and I can’t really explain why bad things keep happening to us. Obviously we’ve led a lot of laps and had tough breaks and it cost us the race.

“It’s unfortunate. We seem to run well there, and it’d be nice to get a win there, especially with it being my home track.”

Vickers’ lone Cup win came in 2006 and in controversial fashion. He triggered a wreck on the last lap of the fall race at Talladega that sent then-Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. spinning while battling for the lead. Vickers, who left Hendrick for Red Bull at the end of that season, hopes 2009 will bring a return victory lane.

“It’s time to get back there,” he said. “That’s for sure.”

Not so long ago, winning a race – much less making the Chase – would have been an unrealistic aspiration for Vickers and his Red Bull team. But not anymore.

“We were a new young team, and we were growing and learning and that was it, but we all understood that,” he said. “I think what really pulled us through all of that was knowing the potential that Red Bull had and knowing the potential Toyota had no matter how bad it was at the moment.

“And then I think last year we showed that. We showed the potential that both had – that Red Bull had and that Toyota had – and that felt really good.”