Zany Scott Speed is serious about only one thing – racing

By Jeff Owens

Friday, March 19, 2010

Scott Speed's latest zany antic is dying his hair black and blue.

Sam Cranston
NASCAR Illustrated

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BRISTOL, Tenn. – Scott Speed admits that he rarely takes anything seriously.

This from the guy whose claim to fame in NASCAR so far is painting his toenails.

His zany antics have quickly made him a star of social media. He recently started a Twitter survey about people peeing the shower and last week tweeted about he and his wife pouring hot candle wax on each other.

He showed up Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway with his hair dyed black and blue.

There is one thing, though, that Speed takes seriously. Very seriously.

“Inside the race car, I definitely take that very seriously,” he says.

“There are not many other things in my life I take too serious. I think life is short and you need to enjoy it. If you take everything really seriously then, I don’t know, it doesn’t work for me.”

While Speed continues to be one of NASCAR’s most colorful and entertaining drivers, he is definitely serious on the track, emerging after four races as this season’s most improved driver.

Speed arrived at Bristol 12th in points a year after finishing 35th in his rookie season in the Sprint Cup Series. He started this season outside the top 35 in owner points, but will be locked into a guaranteed starting spot beginning next week at Martinsville.

He scored his second career top-10 finish two weeks ago at Atlanta and has led three of the four races this year.

“Obviously the start of the season is going pretty well considering where we are sitting in points. I think it’s a little bit more than all of us expected,” Speed said Friday.

“I think the idea of going into every race and just finishing with a top-20 or 100 points has kind of been our goal to make sure we were in the top-35 after these five races. [It] has turned out better than we thought. Evidently that was a good idea. I don’t think we’re going to change anything there, we’re going to continue to sort of aim for top-20 finishes and try to stay out of all the crashes.”

The question now is whether Speed can stay in the top 12 and make the Chase For The Sprint Cup. Are he and his No. 82 Red Bull Racing team for real?

“If we stay up here in the top 12 or if we fall back some in the points, the key is looking one year out and it’s still learning experiences,” he said.

“We’re going to make mistakes, there’s no question. I think it’s not exactly super realistic that we’re going to stay here for very long, but it certainly shows how much progress we’ve made and we still have more to make.”

Speed says the progress he and his team have made actually started last year when teammate Brian Vickers made NASCAR’s Chase For The Sprint Cup.

“We started running a lot more competitively,” he said. “We had so many things go wrong and we were so unlucky towards the last end of the year that we stayed outside of the top-35. That should certainly have never been the case.

“We certainly have stepped it up even more in the offseason, and coming back after an offseason break, everything makes more sense and we work better as a team together, as the 82 team itself.

“We’re continuing to go forward. … I think really I’m still one year out at being close to 100 percent of my potential here.”

Though he came to NASCAR from Formula One and open-wheel cars, Speed believes Bristol, the high-banked, half-mile oval, is one of his best tracks. He has finished 28th and 15th in two career starts here.

“I have no idea [why],” he says. “It’s one of those things that we don’t quite fully understand but certainly of all the tracks, this one is probably the only one out of all of them that I seem to be very fast at right away and have continued to be very competitive here.

“There’s certainly something about the place that fits my driving style or my background, but what that is exactly, I guess we’ll never know.”

Another big mystery is why Speed suddenly dyed his hair. As usual, he has a bizarre explanation.

“It has absolutely nothing to do with racing, like most things in my life, I guess,” he said. “It was just one of those things where I was sort of bored looking in the mirror.

“I had always done different stuff with my hair. I had a Mohawk at one time, I bleached it all platinum white at one time, but I had gone about a year and a half, I would say since I got married honestly, I sort of lost the drive to fix myself.

“I actually got on Twitter and asked what people thought about me dyeing my hair black and blue for Bristol. If I get enough ‘yes,’ then I might do it. I got more responses for that than I have ever with what I have posted on there. Everyone said I should do it and I knew Amanda [his wife] hated it and she didn’t want me to do it so I said, ‘Look babe, this is what the people want, sorry.’

“It kind of gave me the ammunition, or the confidence, to do it without causing too [many] problems at home. Amanda still hates it and I love it so there will be some more interesting conversations between Amanda and I on Twitter, I’m sure.”