TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Fast, Offbeat Speed Gaining Notice

Getty Images

Scott Speed, driver of the #2 Red Bull Toyota, walks down pit row before the start of the ARCA RE/MAX Series Pocono 200

ADVERTISEMENT

By TONY FABRIZIO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 14, 2008

Updated: 06/14/2008 12:13 am

The winner of last month's Craftsman Truck Series race at Dover opened his media center interview with words never before uttered by a NASCAR driver.

"We're going to start with the nice, lovely pedicure that I got on my feet," he said. "I got my little toes done on the plane. There is a little blue on the tip. That's going to become a tradition."

Meet Scott Speed. He's young (25), hip, quirky and refreshing.

He's the latest American bust in Formula One, lasting only a season and a half with Scuderia Toro Rosso before his release last summer.

But then again, you have to be pretty good just to get to Formula One, don't you?

Now he's one of several open-wheel standouts trying to transition to stock-car racing. But unlike fellow F1 transplant Juan Montoya and former Indy Racing League champions Sam Hornish Jr., and Dario Franchitti, Speed is getting some training in the lower ranks.

He won an ARCA race at Kansas in April, finished second in the ARCA race at Pocono last weekend, and he won in only his sixth start in the truck series. He'll compete in today's truck race at Michigan.

"He's phenomenal to work with," said Jay Frye, general manager of Red Bull Racing, which has Speed under contract as a developmental driver. "He's very motivated, very particular, and he's a sponge."

A California surfer boy (born in Mateca, Calif.) with European tastes, Speed lives part of the year in North Carolina and part of it in Austria with his girlfriend, Valentina Neuhauser, who is sometimes seen at the tracks.

He wears oversized sunglasses and earphones that drape down his neck and connect to an iPod that's usually playing electronic dance music.

"He's not your average human being, that's for sure," Speed's mother, Julie Speed, told The Record of Stockton, Calif., recently. "He's so out there. He tends to be the center of attention, whether on purpose or not. People tend to be drawn to him, he's so full of life."

Instead of a victory burnout at Dover, Speed sat on his truck and struck a "The Thinker" pose, resting his head atop his arm staring skyward.

He wore his hat sideways in Victory Lane, walked into the media center with his driver's suit pulled down to his waist, and, yes, actually credited his throttle control to his pedicure.

"You've obviously never experienced the joy of having someone take care of your feet," he said. "It was quite amazing, actually. My feet were very, very soft, very beautiful, actually, by my standards. Don't knock it until you've tried it."

Frye says Speed has flashes of the late Tim Richmond, the colorful and nonconformist 1980s driver whose life was the inspiration for the character Cole Trickle in the movie "Days of Thunder."

"There were some things Richmond did that were advanced for the time, and there are things Scott does that are different," Frye said. "But it's funny. You see drivers such as Jack Sprague and Ron Hornaday Jr., and they've obviously taken a liking to him."

Speed didn't come up on short tracks like a majority of NASCAR drivers, or even in sprint cars, like Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman. He was a karting sensation who in 2003 won the Red Bull Driver Search for the next American F1 driver.

He moved to Europe and won two formula series championships despite battling ulcerative colitis, a severe digestive disorder. When he made his first F1 start for Toro Rosso (Red Bull in Italian) at the 2006 Bahrain Grand Prix, Speed became the first American to race on the world circuit since Michael Andretti in 1993.

But he never finished better than ninth in 28 starts. His release sent him back to America, where his most logical destination was Indy car racing.

"You have no idea how many times in my life I said I would never race NASCAR - ever," Speed said last week at Pocono. "I guess it came down to ... if you have to step down a bit from F1 ... and do Champ Car or IRL or any road racing for that matter, it's hard to swallow that.

"After thinking about it, I figured, well, it would be a huge challenge to be successful doing this."

Speed raised some eyebrows recently when he said stock-car racing really isn't that hard and that "at the end of the day, there's two corners." Kyle Busch retorted that Speed has "a rude awakening when he gets a little bit further."

Whether he succeeds at NASCAR's top level or not, Scott Speed will never be one of the crowd.

Reporter Tony Fabrizio can be reached at (813) 259-7994 or afabrizio@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT