For Vickers, It’s A Long Way From Lowe’s

If you use your imagination, you could picture Mike Joy saying something like this, not so long ago: “…..And Brian Vickers finishes fifth, giving Toyota their first top five in NASCAR Nextel Cup competition at the 2007 Coca- Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.”

It wasn’t so long ago, THIS was Toyota and Red Bull’s idea of a victory. Hopefully, for their sakes, Toyota’s Lee White, Red Bull’s Dietrich Mateschitz and driver Brian Vickers had plenty of Tylenol handy, because that 2007 season couldn’t have been a whole lot of fun.

Just months earlier, Vickers left the top stable in NASCAR, Hendrick Motorsports, for the upstart Team Red Bull. It had a cool, “Millennial” ring to it, Red Bull was well-funded and he’d be driving for a manufacturer committed to investing whatever it took to be a winner.

2007 was a painful year for anyone remotely involved with Toyota. If they were baseball team, they would have been the Washington Nationals. There was the fuel additive mess with Michael Waltrip’s team at Daytona to start the year, and all the affiliated teams were strugglers or start-ups. They say that you “have to finish to finish first.” Well, to finish, you have to start and Toyota cars couldn’t find the starting grid with a GPS system.

Vickers’ line for the 2007 season read as follows: he started 23 of 36 races with ONE top five and five top tens- good (we’re using the term liberally here) for 38th in the points.  Though he was by no means the top dog at HMS, his performance was WAY better than this.

When you’re at the bottom, it doesn’t take much to show improvement. Fortunately, the 2008 season for Brian Vickers was a quantum leap, comparatively speaking, as he finished the season 19th in the points standings. As a matter of fact, Vickers and numerous fans will tell you the June, 2008 race win was his, and not Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s as the bigger, older redhead from North Carolina baby’ed his car in for a fuel mileage victory.

Like I said when I previewed Team Red Bull at the outset of the season, the climb from the basement to the first floor isn’t all that hard, it’s getting to the upper echelon that is the challenge. I’ll be the first to admit that I had Brian Vickers pegged for a run quite similar to what he had last year- that he’d be good enough to get into races, he’d be good enough to lead laps, he might even contend for a random win or two, but wouldn’t close the deal.

After he shook off a disastrous 39th finish at Daytona, the result of that incident that also involved Junior and Kyle Busch, he started showing signs of promise.When the fireworks from the “Great American Race” died down, Vickers reeled off three straight top 10s, with a top five for good measure.

A team’s growth is often the wobbly walk of a newborn colt, rather than springing to a full gallop. It looked like it was back to the drawing board with Vickers’ and Pemberton’s blueprints as he went of a 4-race run from Bristol to Phoenix with a string of mediocre finishes, with an average finish of 24th. A respectable day at the ever-wild Talladega seemed to break the slump, but pedestrian runs in Dover, Pocono and New Hampshire would have doubters thinking he’d reverted back to old form.

Sometimes a slumping baseball player will find comfort with an old stance, a basketball player an old, favorite, forgotten move. Perhaps it was a return to Vickers comfort zone- a superspeedway- that got him going again. He reeled off a 7th place finish on Independence Day, triggering off a run of four consecutive top 10s, including a top five at the Brickyard.

No doubt Vickers had the horses to ride, with 6 poles on the season. For the last couple of seasons, Toyota and Red Bull had dramatically improved performance as evidenced by the speed. Now it was just a matter of closing the deal. Remember, it’s always that final dizzying rung on the ladder that’s the hardest to reach.

Perhaps the most convincing evidence of his growth was not the fact Vickers won, but how he did it. I’ve never struggled to think of the 25-year old as fearless, given the improvements in equipment, I didn’t doubt his speed. But fuel mileage? Brian Vickers? Not only has Vickers not had that “feather the gas” reputation, Toyota has not been noted for their fuel economy on the track.

Give Pemberton credit for believing in his driver. He said following the race that any time he’s asked Vickers for two laps, he’s gotten five. The one-time phenom of the Hendrick garage was able to succeed on this day in a way that a champion and one of the best to never win a championship were not. On this day, Brian Vickers exorcised the demons of failed race days past- propelling the 2003 Busch Series champion into victory lane.

I’ve been looking for that driver who’d be what Jeremy Mayfield was just a few short years ago- that Cinderella story- that guy who could muster up a late season win to make the chase and spice things up a bit.

The remainder of this chapter remains to be written. There’s a lot standing between Brian Vickers and the Sprint Cup championship. Drivers who know all about the pressure and who have the ability to bring their “A” game when it counts will be there at every turn.

For Vickers- this win is just more than a single race victory. It shows a Toyota team not named Joe Gibbs Racing can be a factor in this series. It shows the folks at Red Bull they made the right call to bring Vickers into the fold after the 2006 season. And if anyone had any remaining cynicism about Toyota’s ability to be viable in NASCAR, that has been put to rest here. It also shows Vickers is far from a fluke, a long ways removed from that crash-propelled victory at Talladega.

All the parties involved in this win have come a long way since that Memorial Day weekend in 2007 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, when finishing near the front would have to be good enough.

It’s a long way from Lowe’s to a frolic in the clover of the Irish Hills.

PHOTO CREDITS- Upper left photo by Jerry Markland/ Getty Images for NASCAR. Vickers in Lowe’s Motor Speedway wall by Walter G. Arce. Vickers at 2005 awards by s54901. To see more, visit flickr.com or click on the links.