Brian Vickers is 25 years old and, in his chosen profession, there is no question that he is on the fast track. Even so, he still doesn’t quite seem like the kind of guy who’d buy a Manhattan penthouse apartment in SoHo. Not too long ago, he was a Boy Scout and a straight-A student growing up in Thomasville, N.C., a small city best known for the furniture made there.
But Mr. Vickers was also a stock-car-driving prodigy, skipping his high school prom because it conflicted with a race. These days he is a veteran of Nascar’s top series who has won more than $17 million since joining it at the age of 19.
Nascar’s hub is Charlotte, N.C., where Mr. Vickers, who drives for the Red Bull team, spends most of his time. Many drivers live on or near Lake Norman, which is north of the city and an ideal place to sneak away from the roar and grumble of stock car racing and its legions of fans. “Our whole industry lives on Lake Norman,” Mr. Vickers said recently as he stood on the rooftop terrace of his three-bedroom apartment in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. “I don’t find that as an escape.”
“Some people live in New York City and escape elsewhere,” he said. “I live elsewhere, and escape to New York.”
It might sound incongruous, a stock car driver whose second home is a Manhattan penthouse, but Mr. Vickers, who likes to meditate and cycle, is a far cry from Nascar’s rough-and-tumble pioneers like Lee Petty and Fireball Roberts. He’s one of the newer breed of drivers who have the youthful good looks of an ad spokesman or one of Nashville’s new generation of country singers. And his stock car is, of all things, a Toyota. No, it’s not a hybrid.
Mr. Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, the two-time defending series champion who is another former teammate of Mr. Vickers, also have apartments in New York. As Mr. Johnson explained in a separate interview, New York is not a Nascar hotbed, so he can blend in.
“It’s worlds away from what we normally do,” Mr. Johnson said. “Nobody knows or cares who I am.”
Few people in New York apparently know or care who Mr. Vickers is, either. When he is in Charlotte, he is sometimes stopped mid-bite during dinner at a restaurant to pose for a photo or sign an autograph.
“Here,” Mr. Vickers said, “there’s an actor, or an actress, or a celebrity, or the president of another country sitting at the next table.”
The building is new and sits on a cobblestone street in a relatively quiet neighborhood, near SoHo’s strollable boutiques, galleries and restaurants. It’s also near a subway stop. This stock car driver does not keep a car in New York, and he hates the city’s ultra-heavy traffic. He does own a sturdy black bicycle, which he has used to explore Manhattan from tip to tip.
A metal sculpture of what appears to be a stylized eagle is perched near the fireplace. The statue is made from parts of the stock car in which Mr. Vickers led 61 laps early in a race last Memorial Day weekend at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C. But his left rear tire came off, and he wrecked. A friend made the statue for him. Except for that sculpture, there is little acknowledgment of his career as a Nascar driver.
Mr. Vickers climbed a set of stairs and opened a door that led to the roof, which is fringed with tall bushes along one wall. As he took in the Lower Manhattan skyline, he said, “This was definitely the No. 1 selling point.”
Ever the Boy Scout, he still loves the outdoors, even if it is on the roof of a seven-story building in SoHo. “You’re up here,” he said softly, “and it’s almost like a jungle in front of you, only with concrete and steel instead of trees.”
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