Turns out a race car driver from Manteca, California, with the ready-to-wear name of Scott Speed,
is good friends with one of NASCAR's major team owners, Richard Childress. And that's a good thing for any race car driver, but especially for Speed and Childress, too. Speed, the first American-born F1 driver since Michael Andretti spent a year "over there" in 1993, was, at the least, a serviceable driver for a team (the "independent" Torro Rosso) which had little or no chance of ever giving their two team drivers cars which were capable of podium (top three) finishes. Speed was recently let go by Torro Rosso, and one of f the first things he did was get on the phone with Childress, who invited Speed (and his multi-zillion dollar sponsor Red Bull) to check-out NASCAR, starting, like, next year. Race car drivers generally slow down as they get older, and Speed, who was only 10 when Michael Andretti had his disastrous year of a campaign in F1, now at 24, needs o get in a race car for someone, the bigger the bucks, the better.
Speed was fired from the team (and unfairly so, in the eyes of many of the sport's observers and analysts) yet remained on good terms with his sponsor, Red Bull, a rarity in the sport where egos are paramount above all. Red Bull, his sponsor's main product, is an "energy" soft drink, developed in the 1980s in Thailand and now marketed nearly worldwide, a fabulous success story in itself. Yet for all Red Bull's cash, success in F1 has been fleeting.
Red Bull's seemingly impulsive co-owner, Dietrich Mateschitz, who lives in Switzerland and in Palm Desert, California. has become one of the world's premier sporting sponsors, putting money into everything from the so-called "extreme sports" like BMX, skateboarding and surfing competitions, and into that vast black hole of money known as F1 racing. The very few "independents" in F1 include both of Mateschitz's teams, his original Team Red Bull with drivers David Coulthard and Mark Webber, and Team Scuderia Torro Roso (which translates into "Red Bull Stable"), which was known as Minardi F1 up until its purchase by Mateschitz of the ever-struggling team in 2005. Toro Rosso included Scott Speed until his "sacking" (as the Brits' say; Speed was replaced by the team's test driver Sebastian Vettel).
Can Speed translate his friendship with both Mateschitz and Childress (RCR) into a ride in Nextel Cup as soon as this next season? We think if he doesn't, he may have some problems we don't know about. The guy is a natural. His only drawbacks, which might be welcome in NASCAR in these these days of sensationalizing the sport ala "professional" wrestling, are his well-known temper and penchant for sometime taking a pot-shot (with his fists) at competitors or others he simply doesn't feel very positive about.
Here's a topic which someone must bring up. We feel very close to Speed not only because he was the first American to break into F1m, and do it complete on his own racing merits, moving to Europe at a young age and going through all the "minor league" series to get to the big time, but because he has a Ulcerative Colitis (UC). We have a chronic illness similar to UC, but, unlike Speed's affliction, our illness can not be solved with surgery, which apparently Speed has had. The surgery can involve the removal of some or all of the large bowel; whether or not Speed has had a colostomy is known and no one's business. Certainly, the disease and surgery have not affected his racing career, and can only applaud the heights Speed has reached in his chose profession. Yet, UC sometimes needs to be "medically managed" over a long period of time if there not a complete surgery, or only a partial removal.
If that is the case, one of the drugs Speed might be taking daily is prednisone, a form of steroid, which definitely can affect one's temper, and I'm not talking about making one's temper more calm. In fact, just the opposite. On-going, long-term use of steroids can absolutely increase one's muscle mass but also, and unfortunately, make one much more tempermental, giving both super highs and lows with hours of each other, and also make the long-term user more aggressive than usual. If this is Speed's problem, and several instances of his being hot-tempered, not unusual at all in any form of motor racing, have been documented.
Another open-wheel racer which will probably align with with Richard Childress is Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti, he with the famous actress wife Ashley Judd, best-looking one in the Judd family, we think. Franchitti is almost nearly-signed to a closed-wheel NASCAR deal with RCR. Apart from a rain-delayed Indy 500 win, Dario has also won 17 Indy Racing League events.
Childress' team run Chevrolet engines in their NASCAR race cars, which tip the scales at about 2,000 pounds (!) more than either Franchitti's or Speed's open-wheel machines. Red Bull runs one of the few Toyota teams in NASCAR Cup races this season. Whether either Franchitti or Speed would be able to run Toyota engines remains to be seen. It's possible there might be conflicts with some of their sponsors.
In any event, it's great to have Scott Speed racing in his home country, where fans can follow his 
development and see what a talented race car driver he really has become. American in F1 have always been a talented bunch, and there have been very few. Phil Hill won the F1 World Championship in 1961, and he won the 24 Hours of LeMans that same year. Kid was on kind of a streak, huh? Americans Dan Gurney and Richie Ginther (who was the model for the James Garner character in the wonderful film, "Grand Prix") each won races in F1 but never the title. Gurney became and remains the only driver in F1 history to win a race in car he had built (The American Eagle). Then came Mario Andretti, who won the World Driving Title in 1978; We'll never forget seeing Andretti waving the American flag during his victory lap on the street-racing course of the United States Grand Prix West in his Colin Chapman-built Lotus. (Photo --- Phil Hill driving at the Nurburgringin 1962).
Then Mario's son, Michael, tried F1 in 1993, and he hated it almost as much as the "Euro-trash" who surround F1 and hire and fire its players, hated him. Supposedly, the lack of American food (specifically hambugers) at the food stands which serviced the F1 drivers before an event was too much for his first wife, and after a particularly rude incident, she hopped a flight back to the USA and left Michael alone to fight the war himself. Michael followed her soon after (and ultimately divorced her).
In 2007, Scott Speed, after serving as a "test driver" and working his way up the ladder, finally got a 
full-0time ride for the entire season. Everyone knew his car never had a chance against the factory entries (Toyota, BMW, McLaren-Mercedes, Renault, Ferrari, et al) but it was a great chance to prove his mettle. Speed's temper may have failed him one too many times, though, and he's back home in the good ol' USA, apparently heading this time to NASCAR driving a Richard Childress Chevrolet. (Photo -- Michael Andretti at speed).
To us, Scott Seed is a pretty close clone of another temperamental by another highly-talented driver, Robby Gordon. Putting the two of them on the same track in similar race cars will be exciting.
And by the way, Mario Andretti (Michael's son) has signed, at the age of 20, with an F1 team to be their test driver next year, 2008. (Photo -- Marco Andretti and Dario Franchitti's wife, actress Ashley Judd, share a laugh at the track).
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