Red Bull Racing's Scott Speed relies on strength of organization to overcome incident with Brian Vickers
Red Bull Racing's Scott Speed is 35th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings heading into Saturday's race at Daytona International Speedway. // David Griffin, dgriffin@streetandsmiths.com
Red Bull Racing driver Scott Speed says he plans to talk with Sprint Cup Series teammate Brian Vickers sometime this week to discuss their incident during last weekend’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
The two were driving for separate organizations in the Nationwide Series, Speed for Michael Waltrip Racing and Vickers for Braun Racing. Late in the race, Speed got in the back of Vickers’ car, sending it into the wall.
On the cool-down lap, Vickers rammed the back of Speed’s car.
On a national conference call with reporters Tuesday, Speed said he had yet to talk to Vickers.
“Honestly, I haven’t spoken [to him] about it yet,” Speed said with a laugh. “I think we wanted to let things cool down a little bit.”
Speed, who had quipped after he was involved in a crash in New Hampshire’s Cup race Sunday that “maybe Brian paid someone off for yesterday,” said Tuesday that comment was a joke.
“I did mention, however, that I didn’t touch the [No.] 83 [of Vickers] when he was off in the grass under caution,” Speed said. “I didn’t have any part of that. I did jokingly say that he might have paid someone off to take us out, because we were having a really good weekend and then got wrecked, unfortunately.”
Speed said he isn’t worried about any simmering controversy between the two drivers and expects several team officials to be present when the two drivers talk.
“We’ve got a good enough organization here at Red Bull,” Speed said. “We’ve got good people on board, and I’m sure it’s something that we’re going to be able to straighten out, and it’s not going to be such a big deal to carry forward. We’ll have our talk, and I’m sure we’ll be all fine after.”
