Red Bull Racing's Scott Speed won't be intimidated by other Sprint Cup drivers
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – NASCAR Sprint Cup neophyte Scott Speed knows he’s not ready to win at this level yet and says he’ll race accordingly, but he won’t let himself get pushed around, either.
The Red Bull Racing rookie made five Cup starts last year in preparation for his first full-time season. The former Formula One driver, trying to make the switch to stock cars, also ran the full ARCA season in 2008, an experience that ended in controversy.
Speed was in position to win the ARCA title when he tangled with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in the season finale. Stenhouse spun Speed into the wall, and Speed later retaliated by wrecking Stenhouse. The championship eventually went to Justin Allgaier.
Speed said Thursday during Media Day at Daytona International Speedway that he may not react the same way again if encountering a similar situation.
“It’s all relative,” Speed said. “At this point, to go out there and piss anyone off or do anything stupid or disrespectful is not smart at all, and I wouldn’t do it. It’s a totally different circumstance than the ARCA situation. I’m out here trying to learn from all these guys and to gain their respect.
“At the moment, I know I can go up to a guy like Jimmie Johnson and say, ‘Hey, dude, I’m having trouble entering this corner. How do you take it?’ I know he’d give me an honest answer, and he already has.”
The last thing Speed wants to do is earn a poor reputation in Sprint Cup, though he called his retaliation of Stenhouse in the ARCA race a “no-brainer.”
“My car got destroyed because the second-place guy tried to take me out to win the championship,” Speed said. “No one in their right mind would not do something about it. It’s not like I went out there and crashed him – and still could’ve won the championship. It was going to barely run. I had to make them put the tires on and let me go back out. It was very Cole Trickle-ish.”
That doesn’t mean Speed aspires to be like the fictional driver in the movie “Days of Thunder.” Hardly. Speed wants to make his own name in the sport, and he wants it to be held with esteem.
“I’m not going to be fighting for wins right now and I’m certainly not going to be fighting for a championship,” Speed said. “I’m here to learn. The more friends I have out there and the more respectful I am to people, the more they’re going to want to help me, which is beneficial to me.”
Still, if push comes to shove, as it were, Speed won’t be afraid to stand up for himself.
“You’re a race car driver: Your respect out there is what you have,” he said. “If you’re going to be a pushover, that’s not going to work out either. There’s going to be a fine line. Hopefully, we make the right judgment when that comes. There’s going to come a time when, all of a sudden, I’m really racing for it, and then things are going to change. At the moment, and certainly the first five races I did last year, it was more or less doing the laps and gaining the experience.”
