BV Third In Duel No. 2

No. 83 driver Brian Vickers will roll off sixth in the Daytona 500 after finishing third in Thursday’s Duel qualifying race at Daytona International Speedway. He battled winner Kyle Busch and Mark Martin for the victory on the final lap to earn the best Duel finish of his career.

“We had a really good handling car all day, and that made the difference for us,” Vickers said. “We had a shot at it, for sure. Down the backstretch they started racing and we tried to push Mark. Mark and I both had a really good run, and Kyle blocked. Then I had an opportunity to pass both of them, but they beat me to the line.”

Teammate Scott Speed wasn’t as fortunate. He was taken out early when Boris Said’s car blew a tire in front of Speed’s No. 82 Red Bull Toyota. Speed finished 25th and will go to a backup car for the Daytona 500. He won’t practice Friday while the team prepares the car and will return to the track Saturday.

“We were behind Boris Said, and he blew a tire and collected us,” Speed said. “We scraped the wall and messed up something on the car. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time — there’s nothing we could have done to avoid it — except if we’d been running somewhere else. We just have to brush these incidents off our shoulders and move on to race day. The good news is that we’ve been so unlucky this week that the Daytona 500 has to go our way.”

Hear Vickers talk about his run in our audio section at www.redbullracingusa.com.