For Vickers and Allmendinger, time is on their side
By Rea White - Associate Editor
Friday, June 20, 2008
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David Griffin / NASCAR Scene
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Brian Vickers and AJ Allmendinger have seen a definite upturn in performance of late. The Red Bull Racing duo have put together some of the best finishes of their two-year stint with the Toyota team, and Vickers has been challenging for race wins.
When they try to define what's made the difference for this team, each lists several factors, including increased experience with their car, the addition of general manager Jay Frye and the fact that they are competing with just one model this season.
The main thing, though, is simply time for an organization that is in just its second full season of NASCAR Cup competition. The team is more familiar with the cars after working with them for a longer period of time, Allmendinger has more time at the track and on the track, and the entire group has additional time together. It just took them, and new manufacturer Toyota, which debuted with the team last season, a year to figure everything out and smooth out the operation.
Now, Vickers is 16th in the standings and just 97 points outside of the top 12 and a spot in the Chase For The NASCAR Sprint Cup. Allmendinger, after a rocky start to the year, and Mike Skinner, who drove five races for the team, have put the No. 84 team 110 points outside the top 35 and a guaranteed starting spot in the race week to week. In almost a season-and-a-half, Allmendinger has never gone to the track with the luxury of knowing he'd be locked into the field that weekend.
Could that happen this season? It certainly seems possible. The team has made the field for 12 consecutive races and has climbed into the 37th spot in the owner standings.
For this organization, things are clearly looking up.
"We have definitely been running better lately, that's for sure," Vickers says. "It's always hard to pinpoint exactly what the cause is, and it's rarely one single event or one cause, but I think it's a culmination of a lot of things.
"Jay Frye coming on board this year has given a lot of leadership and inspiration to the team and a lot of experience and knowledge in the sport, which we definitely needed. He's done a great job with that. He's brought in a lot of new people on board that have done a great job and also kind of redirected the talents of a lot of existing employees. And when you combine all those together, you think about Toyota, learning and growing, their second year, [Toyota Racing Development's] second year building Cup engines and just having a year under our belts, things are starting to come around, and we've just got to keep this momentum going and hopefully get back in the top 12."
Vickers said some things were expected to be issues and the team knew what to work on and which direction to head in. Others were simply things that worked themselves out or areas where the team just naturally evolved over time.
"Some of it has come from intentional, deliberate changes that have been made in the program to try to make it better," Vickers said. "One thing that I think people don't realize is that – it's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but TRD builds our engines and builds Michael Waltrip engines, and Gibbs builds their own engines. You know, TRD has come a long ways, I mean, a long ways. We started out at the end of last year having a lot of mechanical problems, and NASCAR changed a lot of dimensions for Toyota, which really threw them for a curve ball right at the very last second. They were kind of in the Cup series expecting to run the block they had been running for years in the truck series and had to start over basically. That was tough to overcome, but they did a good job."
Vickers says that Joe Gibbs Racing's switch to Toyota this year has obviously been a boost and adds that they've helped with engines. Still, one can't credit them for all the Toyota improvement.
"At the same time, they haven't shared everything," Vickers says. "Gibbs is not – they do their own engines. It's not an in-house Toyota engine, so it is a different program. But when you take a look at where Michael Waltrip Racing is and where Red Bull is, how much we've gained and how strong TRD and Toyota is compared to last year, you know, maybe TRD hasn't won a race yet, but we've had a second place, we've had two top-5s in a row and had very little failures or mechanical problems like we had last year. So I'm really proud of them. I think they've come a long ways, and I see a lot of potential for the future."
Allmendinger has rallied as well. He admits it was difficult to watch Skinner drive his car for five races while the team tried to determine some of the issues with the car - something a veteran like Skinner might be able to pinpoint more easily than a second-year driver with limited starts could.
When the team worked with Skinner, it made five races and then, within those events, discovered various elements that could help it get better.
"This year him coming out of the car for a little while and Mike Skinner coming on board I think really helped that team kind of understand some of the things that AJ was feeling and helped him and helped the team and just helped the whole process and helped those guys get a little bit of a head start on the top 35 and was a good thing for him," Vickers says. "I think it as very frustrating, and I'm sure it was for him at first, but I think now he looks back on it and sees that it's a positive, and it's obviously showed in their racing performance."
Still, Allmendinger must fear Friday every week. He made just 17 starts last season, going home on numerous Fridays. This season looked like more of the same in the beginning, when the team failed to make the opening three races, although rained-out qualifying sessions played a role in that. Then Skinner stepped in, things began to improve on qualifying day, and the group has not missed a race since that time.
But as he heads to Infineon Raceway for this weekend's Toyota/Save Mart 350 NASCAR Sprint Cup race, Allmendinger finds himself once more needing to make the race.
"It's one of those things that for me still unfortunately I've got to look forward to Friday, and that's our race first," says Allmendinger, a native of Los Gatos, Calif. "We've done a lot of road-course testing. Red Bull Racing has done a great job at building new cars. Last year we went in there, and we really didn't have any road-course testing. I had had a half-day on a road course in the Cup car. I'm a lot more confident going into this weekend.
"But for me, it's always one of those things that it's cool because it's a home race, but at the same point it's probably one of the toughest weekends just trying to divide up time with your family and friends and still being focused on the race track. By the end of the weekend, I'm definitely spent."
Allmendinger has back-to-back top-20 finishes, including a career-best of 12th at Pocono Raceway. He says that the team has found some things with the new car and that they've enhanced their effort significantly. In fact, he finds himself somewhat frustrated with those performances.
"I've been a little bit disappointed with our finishes because we ran in the top 10 both weekends and just kind of missed a little bit on pit strategy," he says. "But first things first, we're running better. We made up a lot of points in the top 35, and we're getting closer, so we've just got to keep doing the right things."
So in his second season of Cup competition, the former Champ Car driver finds himself feeling a little more at home in NASCAR. He has adjusted to the stock cars and now, thanks to some recent stellar efforts, feels more a part of the sport than he has in the past.
And that could help him step up his performance yet another notch.
"Definitely the last few weeks have made me feel like that," he says. "You know, I look up to all these guys, and guys like Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin and those types of guys, they were my heroes growing up. Now getting to get up there and be more competitive and actually pass those guys and race with them and hopefully gain the respect of the guys that run up front is definitely making me feel like I'm more at home and more like I belong here.
"It feels good when you're up there and you have guys like Bobby Labonte came over to me after Pocono and even Kyle Petty coming over from the booth and telling me good job, and they're happy for how I'm running. It does make me feel good because I do respect everybody so much because this is so difficult."
- Mentioned Drivers:
- AJ Allmendinger
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