Diecast Diaries: Red Bull’s failed NASCAR foray

This week’s Diecast Diaries looks at Red Bull in NASCAR. The Austrian energy drinks brand entered NASCAR in 2006, going full-time in 2007 when Toyota joined the series.

Unfortunately, Red Bull’s time in top-level stock car racing was all-too-brief and the brand never reached the lofty heights it has enjoyed in Formula 1 through team ownership and rallying through sponsorship.

Just a year after buying the Jaguar F1 team, Red Bull set to work on its new NASCAR team. Unlike its F1 operation however, Red Bull didn’t buy or sponsor an existing outfit. It did buy cars in its first year of competition though, purchasing a number of Dodges from Bill Davis Racing when Toyota wasn’t ready to enter the series in 2006. In 2007, the team’s first full season, Red Bull Racing Team did everything in-house from a base in Mooresville, North Carolina that it bought from Roger Penske.

The 2007 was a hugely challenging one for any new outfit, let alone one running Toyotas in the Japanese brand’s first season. That year marked the introduction of the Car of Tomorrow, or CoT. The car was used in 16 of the 36 races in that year’s Cup series calendar, so Red Bull and NASCAR’s other Cup teams had two build two different fleets of cars for each of its drivers.

In the driver department, Red Bull had done well for its first year – at least on paper. It had signed  Champ Car star AJ Allmendinger to partner race winner Brian Vickers, previously of Hendrick Motorsports. Neither driver fared well on track. Allmendinger failed to qualify for all but 17 races in 2007, taking a best finish of 15th in the October Charlotte race in the #84.

Although he had a lot more NASCAR experience, Vickers and the #83 team didn’t fare much better, failing to make the cut for 13 races having previously never failed to qualify in his Cup career. He did however managed to claim one top-five finish and four top 10s during his first season with Red Bull.

Allmendinger started his second season, although he had to make way for Mike Skinner for five events after failing to qualify for the opening three races of the season once again. He was later axed permanently in favour of Skinner and Scott Speed. Vickers’ 2008 was much better, making every race and finishing in the top-five three times.

Come 2009, Red Bull was starting to find its feet. F1 exile Speed, who had been groomed for a NASCAR Cup seat in the latter part of 2008 with ARCA and NASCAR Truck and Cup outings, joined the team full-time, but he driver change for the rebranded #82 team didn’t bring a huge upturn in success. Speed did at least qualify for 33 of the year’s 36 races and claimed a top-five finish at Talladega.

For Vickers 2009 was a watershed moment. The 2003 Xfinity series champion took three fifth place finishes and a further nine top-10s. He also claimed Red Bull’s elusive first win in NASCAR at the Carfax 400 in Michigan. Vickers finished the 2009 season in 12th place, the best finish of his Cup career.

Vickers’ win and Speed’s strong run of qualifications ought to have laid the ground work for future success at Red Bull, but 2010 proved to be something of a backwards step. After 10 starts (and three top-10 finishes) Vickers was sidelined with blood clots, and was replaced by Casey Mears, Mattias Ekstrom, Reed Sorenson, Boris Said, and Kasey Kahne. The all-star cast only managed two top-1os between them over the rest of 2010 – the same number achieved by Scott Speed over the course of the year.

Kahne was signed full-time for 2011 on a one-year deal while he waited to replace Mark Martin at Hendrick Motorsports for 2012. The #82 was once again rebranded to the #4 for Kahne. Vickers also returned after heart surgery to cure the ailment that prevented him from racing for much of 2010. Speed was let go to make way for the returning Vickers, a split that proved acrimonious as Speed sued his long-time backer for a breach of contract. The team also fielded a third car for the first (and only) time in its brief history when it entered the #84 once again for development driver Cole Whitt in the final two races of the year.

With its strongest driver lineup yet, big things were expected of Red Bull in 2011. While it did prove to be the team’s most successful season, it was meagre in comparison to Red Bull’s F1 exploits – Red Bull Racing had just won the drivers’ and constructors’ F1 titles in 2010 and would go on to sweep both titles again in 2011, ’12, and ’13.

Vickers claimed three top-fives and four top-10s upon his return, while the highly-rated Kahne took seven top-fives (including three in-a-row towards the end of the year), seven top-10s, and Red Bull’s second race victory in the second visit to Phoenix.

Kahne’s race win came in what proved to be Red Bull’s penultimate NASCAR race. The team shut up shop at the end of 2011 in order for the company to focus fully on its now-successful F1 programme. As was already determined before he signed for Red Bull, Kahne took over Hendrick’s #5 in 2012, Vickers moved to Michael Waltrip Racing, as did Whitt for a handful of Xfinity starts. He would also race for backmarker teams Turn One Racing and Circle Sport in the Cup series. Red Bull’s cars, facilities, and equipment were sold to what would become the BK Racing team.

Red Bull hasn’t been seen in NASCAR since, although rival brand Monster became the Cup series’ primary sponsor in 2017. The brand was rumoured to be taking over from Lowe’s as Jimmie Johnson’s primary sponsor for 2019 but the seven-time champion ultimately unveiled banking firm Ally as his new major backer.

Diecast Diaries is a regular series where I tell the real-world stories of the cars in my personal collection of diecast racing cars.