83 Red Bull: NASCAR’s Young Buck Chases Sprint

Orato: How do you think the season is going, and to what do you owe the success your team is having so far?

Shaun Peet: We’re currently sitting at 9th in the standings. It’s hard to say why we’re having such a good season so far. I think the team’s ability to overcome adversity has been huge this year. We spun out in the qualifier for the Daytona 500 and came back to race our way in. We spun again in California and finished 11th.

Maybe we used up all our bad luck last year. We learned some lessons that have helped us. Because Red Bull’s a brand new team, we’re not taking anything for granted. We know any little detail can factor into our performance.

Orato: Is the Sprint Cup an ascertainable goal?

Shaun Peet: The Sprint Cup is the Holy Grail of NASCAR. The top 12 drivers at the end of the year, with 10 races to go, make the chase. You don’t go into a season thinking that you can’t make it. It’s our focus and our ultimate goal, but does anybody else think we have a chance? Absolutely not. Do we know we’re going to have to fight it out tooth and nail to get there? Yeah, absolutely.

Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, and all those guys that have been in the chase every year, are out of the chase right now, so to cling to that 9th spot is going to take a whole lot of luck, a whole lot of Providence and some pretty good performances, that’s for sure.

A lot of people write us off because we’ve got young drivers – Brian Vickers and A.J Allmendinger.