Not surprisingly, Brian Vickers still without a ride

Nearly every 2011 Spring Cup Series driver has a ride for Speedweeks as the NASCAR offseason comes off of Turn 4, but there is still one notable exception.

Brian Vickers, a two-time Sprint Cup Series winner and formerly of the #83 Red Bull Racing Toyota, is still sitting on the sidelines waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

Time is getting extremely short, however, and any Cup ride he finds will have finished lower than 30th in the 2011 points standings.

Several former Cup winners were out of a job when the 2011 season finished. Teams found sponsorship difficult to come by, and several teams had to shut their doors.

Vickers’ Red Bull team is one of those that shut down after the final race in November at Homestead. But, his wasn’t the only one.

For example, David Ragan’s #6 car didn’t have enough sponsorship to continue as a full-time team and Michael Waltrip Racing kicked David Reutimann to the curb as the season came to a close.

Ragan and Reutimann, along with drivers such as A.J. Allmendinger and Kurt Busch all found rides for 2012, but Vickers has come up empty.

Maybe that’s because his reputation has caught up with him.

Ragan, Reutimann and Allmendinger have kept their noses clean throughout their careers for the most part and haven’t created many enemies in the sport.

Vickers, on the other hand, has ruffled feathers throughout his career, and he really turned up the aggressive meter in 2011.

First, he put Tony Stewart up into the tire barriers in June at Sonoma after Stewart had punted him early in the race. Next, he went nuts in October at Martinsville and effectively ended Matt Kenseth’s championship run. Then, a few weeks later he again got into the back of Kenseth and pushed him all the way into the Turn 3 wall at Phoenix.

His explanation of the Phoenix incident also didn’t help his case.

“He wrecked me at Martinsville, he got wrecked here, but it actually wasn't (payback),” Vickers said after the Phoenix race. “I'm not saying I wasn't going to pay him back, but I'm just saying that wasn't it.”

That may not have been the best time to get into a feud with a championship contender, especially when Vickers’ team was shutting down and he needed to find a different ride for 2012.

The same thing happened to Kurt Busch on a slightly different level. Busch spent most of the year screaming at his team over the in-car radio and pushed things over the limit when he cussed out Dr. Jerry Punch while waiting for an interview at Homestead.

Busch does have a ride for the upcoming season, but his new job as the driver of the #51 car for Phoenix Racing is a large step down from the #22 Penske Racing car he previously drove.

Busch’s temper cost him his job. Luckily for him, he is a former champion and has 24 career Cup victories.

Vickers, on the other hand, has two wins and he wrecked Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson at Talladega in 2006 to get one of them.

Drivers with clean driving reputations or impressive career numbers were able to find a new job this offseason, even if it is in lesser equipment than their previous ride.

Vickers has neither, and now he might be the one 2011 full-time driver who won’t return to the Cup series in 2012.

Kurt Busch finds a ride, but Silly Season still isn’t settled

Even though the biggest name of the NASCAR offseason found a ride, the Silly Season surprisingly still contains several unknowns.

Kurt Busch found a landing spot in the #51 Phoenix Racing car after he mutually separated with Roger Penske and left the #22 car Dec. 5 following his tirade in the final race of the season Nov. 20 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

However, that move does little to clear up the jumbled mess his leaving Penske Racing created.

After Busch left the #22 car it looked like he had very few options for a new ride, and that was true. The #51 car is certainly not a sought-after ride by championship-winning drivers. That car is usually battling for a spot in the top 35 in the points standings rather than battling for championship.

Still, most people thought A.J. Allmendinger was going to stay in the #43 car and the seat in the #22 car would be left up for grabs to unemployed drivers such as David Ragan, David Reutimann and Brian Vickers.

Instead, Best Buy left the #43 car, Penske chose Allmendinger,to drive the #22 car and the three previously mentioned unemployed drivers are still without a ride.

Busch had reportedly talked to Richard Petty Motorsports about driving the #43 car, and that would have cleared up a lot of speculation. Busch would go to the #43, Landon Cassill would stay in the #51 and everybody else would be out of luck.

But that’s not how it works this offseason. Busch ended up at the #51 car so speculation can run wild about who will drive the #43 car and how that team will piece together enough sponsorship to run full-time next season.

Ragan has been a contender for nearly every open ride since the season ended, but he has so far failed to get the job. He has been mentioned as an option for the #43 car, but more recent reports say Nationwide Series driver Aric Almirola might be the guy to get a shot in the #43 Ford.

If that happens, Ragan, Reutimann, Vickers and now Cassill will be in an even more dire position as we head into 2012. After an offseason where unexpected openings popped nearly every week, those three former Sprint Cup Series winners might be relagated to a Nationwide Series ride, at best.

Those scenarios will likely play out after the holidays, but the Busch situation is also still a bit up in the air.

Busch will drive the #51 car in the Cup series, but he also might run in the Nationwide Series for his brother’s team, Kyle Busch Motorsports. If he wanted to add another wild twist to this already crazy offseason, Kurt Busch could decide he doesn’t have a shot at the Chase in the #51 car and instead run for the championship in the Nationwide Series.

Since drivers can now only run for the championship in one series, he would effectively throw away the 2012 Cup season.

That would be a bold move considering there is no guarantee a big-time ride will become available after next season, and he might just have to make the best of his situation at the #51 car.

In any case, the 2012 starting grid is far from set, and Busch’s announcement that he found a job didn’t do much to straighten out where everyone will be by the time Speedweeks roll around at Daytona in February.

Busch’s move certainly filled in a puzzle piece, but it isn’t the final one we may have thought it would be when he left the #22 car a month ago.

Allmendinger's move creates even more questions in wild NASCAR offseason

The twists and turns of a crazy NASCAR offseason continue as a driver who already had a ride for 2012 landed in the #22 Dodge formerly driven by Kurt Busch.

A.J. Allmendinger gets the upgrade and will drive the yellow Shell/Pennzoil car for Roger Penske.

After Penske and Busch parted ways, much of the speculation for who would replace Busch logically steered toward drivers currently without a ride such as David Ragan, David Reutimann and Brian Vickers.

But this year has left no room for logic. Once Paul Menard won the Brickyard 400 we should’ve known something in the universe must be a bit sideways.

This offseason continued the wild ride and has been full of shocking announcements. From Busch leaving the #22 to Allmendinger taking that ride, this year’s offseason has been similar to a restrictor-plate race. After a few laps someone new and totally unexpected comes to the front.

Ragan reportedly had discussions with Penske Racing to drive the #22 car, but Allmendinger joined the party after his sponsor for the #43 car, Best Buy, left to be a part-time sponsor for other Ford drivers Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards.

Allmendinger should do well in the #22 car and a Penske team of Allmendinger and Brad Keselowski should be exciting to watch.

However, this move is really just the first in what will be a fairly long line of driver moves. The three previously mentioned unemployed drivers don’t yet have a ride, and Busch is still trying to find a place to settle.

More logic reasoning would point toward Ragan taking over the #43 car since it is a Ford and he has driven a Ford his entire career, but once again, nothing should be taken for granted this offseason.

Reports last week said Busch might go to Richard Petty Motorsports, and now they suddenly have a spot open.

But, the problem in all of these ideas is the #43 car doesn’t currently have a sponsor. It was amazing Kenseth never attracted a sponsor until Best Buy jumped from one Ford to another, and now the job of finding a full-time sponsor with Daytona testing just three weeks away is going to be quite the project for the people at Richard Petty Motorsports.

The loser in all of this for the moment is Richard Petty Motorsports. One of its main sponsors left early in the week to go to other affiliated teams, and later in the week one of its drivers left.

After coming back a year ago from near bankruptcy to win a race and place both cars in the top 20 in points, the organization is suddenly right back in a very unstable situation.

In any case, the next couple of weeks are going to be interesting. Two teams, the #43 and #51 still need to announce their driver, but several drivers are still going to be without a ride.

Many people went into the offseason with the view that there weren’t many opportunities for drivers looking for a ride. That will still be true as the 2012 season starts, but there will several more drivers in a different uniform than we expected.

Hang on tight, folks. This offseason rollercoaster still has a lot of twists and turns left.

Rating the Brickyard 400: 3 Stars ***

A year of spectacular surprises continued Sunday at the Brickyard when Paul Menard … Yes, Paul Menard … kissed the bricks after winning the Brickyard 400. Overall, Indy had a race with a 3 Star Rating, but a 5 Star storyline.

Wow. Was that race even real? Is this season even real? The variety of drivers visiting Victory Lane is reaching epic proportions. Menard became the 14th different winner in just 20 races this season.

We’ve had several of the regulars make their visit and others snap long losing streaks, but we’ve also seen new drivers.

Regan Smith, David Ragan and Menard have shown steady progress of late and the win culminated a long stretch of improvement, but for years it felt like these guys were never going to win. Their job was to challenge the winners but never really factor into the win. All of a sudden they are all factors and could bring new faces to the Chase.

Regardless, Menard’s win at the Brickyard is a stunner. This was the low-performing, family funded, way too long sideburned driver of the brightest car in the field. Menard has always been the butt of jokes, but Sunday his butt was in the air as he made NASCAR’s most famous kiss at the finish line at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

What an incredible season this is becoming. The action on the track has been curiously tame the past several months, but at the end somebody new comes to the front and is able to hold onto the lead, or at least hang in the top 10 for a good finish.

Interestingly, several teams have made crew chief changes in a year where a crew chief has to make a strategy call almost every race that either puts his driver at the front or relegates him to the back of the field.

There’s also no reason to think this type of racing will change any time soon. The series hasn’t been to a track outside of Daytona in months where it hasn’t been incredibly difficult to pass, the tires continue to show little drop-off in speeds week after week and there have been very few late-race cautions.

These ingredients continue to produce a race where strategy determines where a driver finishes nearly as much as the quality of his car. It will be interesting to see if some of the regular suspects start to rack up wins as the series returns to tracks for a second time.

Overall, Indy was typical Indy until the crazy circumstances that developed at the end. It’s amazing that one of the longest tracks on the schedule can also be one of the most difficult to pass. The speeds are so high entering a corner with only one groove that drivers rarely even attempt to race side-by-side. If they do, it usually results in a big wreck. That was the case Sunday when four drivers thought they could make it through Turn 3 four-wide.

Anyway, next week it’s back to the ever-exciting Pocono Raceway. Now that Menard has a win, the Race to the Chase is on as three drivers are now eligible for the two wild-card spots. The next month or so will be fun to watch that battle continue to develop. Have a good week, everybody.

Rating the Coke Zero 400: 5 Stars *****

The third restrictor-plate race of the season served up another wild night at Daytona as NASCAR celebrated the Fourth of July with a race that deserves a 5 Star Rating.

David Ragan drove another very good race at Daytona and this time he finally closed the deal. Ragan has always been a good restrictor-plate driver, but something has always kept him from winning. Saturday night, however, he and Matt Kenseth were set up perfectly to drive off to the win on the final restart.

After a green-flag run of 105 laps that included two green-flag pit stops, everybody went back to their Sonoma ways with a take-no-prisoners style of racing. First, Jeff Gordon made an incredible save after getting turned sideways in Turn 3. In a rebound that can only happen at a plate track, he came back in just two green-flag laps to finish sixth.

The debate about the two-car draft style of racing will be debated as much as whether or not there should be more road courses on the schedule, but this style continues to evolve. Each time the Sprint Cup Series visits either Talladega or Daytona, the racing changes. It might not be much, but the little difference the drivers learn each race will take restrictor-plate racing into an unknown future.

Yes, there was still a bunch of two-car drafting Saturday night, but there were glimpses of the old style of drafting, as well. Kyle Busch and Joey Logano were able to keep up with the lead pack all night, but they were never constantly pushing each other. Drivers still have to be pushing each other if they want to make passes, but it looks like drivers won’t lose the draft if they don’t have somebody constantly on their rear bumper.

That doesn’t mean a driver without a partner can contend. He will still drop like a rock to the back of the field and eventually get lapped, but there might be some room for the more traditional drafting than everybody first thought, and that will only become more pronounced as both surfaces at Talladega and Daytona start to age.

So, after a wonderful holiday weekend, next week the series makes its first-ever stop at Kentucky Motor Speedway. This track is 1.5 miles long, but don’t expect the same, relatively boring racing some other 1.5-mile tracks often produce. Something about this track usually produces pretty good racing, as well as surprise winners. That would certainly fit the 2011 season. Happy Fourth of July, everybody!