Brian Vickers and AJ Allmendinger both failed to make it to Victory Lane at Pocono Raceway. Still, there was an air of celebration around Red Bull Racing when the drivers completed the exhausting 500 miles of racing.
Vickers had finished second, and Allmendinger a career-best 12th for Red Bull’s most complete day of racing since its turbulent entry into NASCAR.
After a horrendous inaugural season of struggles that saw both drivers combine to miss 32 starts, Sunday’s showing proved the team is making slow but steady steps toward becoming a competitive player in NASCAR. The strong day capped a solid five-week run during which the Vickers team won the Pit Crew competition and Allmendinger scored his first stock-car victory by winning the non-points qualifying event before the all-star race.
“We’re kind of starting to get on a roll,” said general manager Jay Frye. “We had a good day (in Pocono). Last week we had a pretty good week. But you’ve got to finish the deal, too, and finishing the deal is actually winning the race. We came closer to finishing the deal (at Pocono) than we ever have.
“We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re pointed in the right direction.”
Vickers is also making a slow climb to the start of the field. He finished fifth at Talladega, led 61 laps at Charlotte, was 13th two weeks ago in Dover and followed it by leading 18 late laps Sunday before settling for second behind winner Kasey Kahne.
“We’d like to win a race this year, and we’d like to be in the top 15,” Vickers said. “But in the next year, run for a championship, that’s kind of our mind-set. We’re kind of on target for that.”
“The future should be very bright for this company,” Frye said. “We have three very good young drivers. We’ve got to continue to build an infrastructure to the company. We’ve got to continue to build the program, set them up to succeed. We have three under-26-year-old drivers who are all performing right now. That’s exciting.”
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