Scott Speed Proves He Has More Than Just a Fast Name

August 8, 2008
By: The Rubber Racer
Just like something out of the Disney movie Cars, a hot shoe with a fast name has surfaced on the NASCAR scene. He’s not your typical American stock car driver. He likes to get pedicures and he dresses quite European. He looks like he would still fit in on the paddock at Monte Carlo or lying on a yacht with Kimi Raikkonen. But does his style really matter? This young man can straight up drive a stock car. Unlike much of his open wheel predecessors Speed has shown promise immediately. In his very first ARCA/ReMax series start at Talladega Superspeedway in October of 2007, Speed finished with a resounding 7th place. Dario Franchitti finished in 17th at the very same race. Juan Pablo Montoya finished in 3rd place in the 2006 Talladega race. We all know how quickly Montoya has assimilated into stock cars. But instead of rushing him right into stock car’s biggest venue Speed was given the opportunity to cut his stock car teeth in the ARCA Re/Max and the Craftsman Truck series where he has 4 victories between the 2 series. His first ARCA Re/Max victory came on the intermediate Kansas Speedway. Since that first win in a stock car, Speed has won at Dover in the Craftsman Truck series and went back to back in the ARCA Re/Max series winning at both Kentucky and Berlin Speedway in July.  If there’s any doubt that this young man can wheel a stock car a simple look at his statistics in the heavier cars will squash those doubts.

Unless you follow Formula One racing you may not of heard the name Scott Speed prior to this year. Here is a glance of his racing career

Scott Speed started his racing career when he was 10 years old. Driving in a racing Kart Scott showed signs of a budding career quite early. In just his 2nd year in a racing kart Scott won his first national title. Between 1993 and 2001 Scott raced his way to 2 125cc SKUSA Super National titles, 2 IKF Grand National titles and 3 IKF Regional titles. In 2002 Scott won the Rock Island Grand Prix. He also had great runs in the Formula Dodge National Tour and the Star Mazda Championship Series. Scott took a win in his first Star Mazda race at Sebring International Raceway. Even though Scott only competed in 6 of the 9 Star Mazda races he still finished 8th in the points standings.  In the Formula Dodge National Tour Speed captured 2 wins, 7 podium finishes and 5 poles en route to a 3rd place finish in the points standings.

In 2003 Scott was chosen to compete in the Red Bull Driver Search. Scott beat out his other young competitors to be one of the drivers chosen to be apart of the Red Bull Racing Team. Scott kicked off his worldwide tour in the same year. He had limited success in the 2003 Formula 3 Britain Championship. He competed in 2 Asian Formula Renault Challenge races in 2004 earning 2 podium finishes, one of which was a win, and 1 pole position. He also won both the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup and Formula Renault 2.0 Germany championships in 2004. In 2005 Speed made the jump to the GP2 series. After a successful run in the series Scott took home a 3rd place in the championship standings in 2005 with 12 top 5 finishes. He also ran a limited A1 Grand Prix schedule that same year. Competing in 6 events Scott’s best finish was 4th place in his final race of the series. The 5 races leading up to his top 5 resulted in 3 DNF and 2 top 15 finishes.

After 2 test runs for Red Bull Racing in Formula One in 2005 Scott finally got his chance at the top series in the world in 2006. Driving a Toyota for Red Bull Racing Scott was faced with a very difficult task in Formula One. In his first start in the series at Bahrain on March 12, 2006 Scott pulled off a 13th place finish. Competing against Ferrari and McLaren in Formula One is no easy thing to do and after competing in 28 races in 2006 and 2007 Scott’s run in the world-renowned series was over. His Formula One career resulted in a best finish of 9th in the 2007 Monaco Grand Prix. Scott pulled off a total of 4 top 10 finishes with an average finish of 16th during his 28 Formula One run.

With NASCAR’s decision to allow Toyota to compete on it’s biggest stage in 2007, Red Bull Racing made the decision to throw its’ hat in the stock car ring. With Scott’s Formula One career coming to an end the logical choice was to bring the young man back to the United States as one of Red Bull’s development drivers. The decision has proven to be very beneficial for both Scott and Red Bull Racing thus far. Scott has seemed to really find his place in racing and the transition has been flawless. It is very safe to assume that a jump to Sprint Cup is inevitable for Scott.

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