In the span of a short Sunday afternoon, Scott Speed went from points leader to finishing fifth in the ARCA RE/MAX Series championship. He got wrecked by his closest pursuer [Ricky Stenhouse Jr] on lap 27 and returned the favor 7 laps later — an incident that classified his car’s damage as “terminal” after it hit the inside and outside walls. Still, Speed said he earned valuable “street cred.” “Straight out of ‘Days of Thunder,’ I just said, ‘Change my tires. Just put the tires on it and let me go out and try it,’” said Speed (a.k.a. Cole Trickle). “I went out for a lap and a half until the 99 (Ricky Stenhouse Jr., a.k.a. Russ Wheeler) was in our presence. And I did to him what he did to me. From my perspective, I was the championship leader and he disrespected me on the track so there was no way I was going to let him win a championship like that.” Speed finished 34th in ARCA’s season finale. His 2008 stat line reads like this: 4 wins, 3 poles, 10 top fives and 17 top 10’s in 21 races.
This is coming from a dude who raced Formula One last year.
Before the end of the 2007 F1 season, he leaves the monumentally under-performing Red Bull sponsored F1 team, and decides to come over to stock cars.
The guy had never even been in a stock car until he made his debut at Talladega, both qualifying and finishing in seventh place in late 2007.
In 2008 he ran the full ARCA schedule, during which he wins 4 races and damn near wins the ARCA Championship, all while also running 11 races in the NASCAR Truck Series, garnering one win, three top fives (one at fucking Bristol), and five top 10’s.
So his combined stats in both series for 2008 are 32 starts, 5 wins, 13 top fives, and 22 top ten finishes.
Those are serious fucking numbers people.
Scott Speed. Learn the name, you’ll be hearing it more in the future.
