CONCORD, N.C. -- The place comes complete with hostesses in black dresses and high leather boots, a beefy security guard in a cowboy hat, plush red couches and a DJ spinning records after dark. Red Bull Racing Team's "energy station" is a sleek, traveling nightclub big enough to hold 250 people, a racetrack oasis outfitted with wide-screen televisions, stocked bars, thumping music and all the taurine you can drink.

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I feel like I feel the car a bit more. I feel more comfortable in what I feel and what I want to change as opposed to the old Cup cars, the ones I'm racing in ARCA.

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SCOTT SPEED

Scott Speed fits right in. Clad in a gray skull cap, a white track jacket and oversized sunglasses, a large pendant stamped with the word "love" hanging around his neck, the 25-year-old former Formula One driver appears very much in his element. This is, after all, a guy who looks more like a visiting artist than a racecar driver, who signs his autograph as a pair of superimposed dollar signs, whose personal style runs the gamut from flamboyant to outrageous. And beginning next week, he becomes a full-time competitor on NASCAR's premier series.

It's easy to dismiss him as a flake, as another former open-wheeler who's going to come to NASCAR only to flame out, as a Euro-centric weirdo who paints his toenails blue and has a strange obsession with shoes and garish headwear. But then Scott Speed slides into a racecar, and begins to live up to his rather apt last name, and it becomes all about performance, and all those other things begin to disappear.

"The thing that's so nice about Scott is, every track we go to that he's never seen, usually his third or fourth lap, that's his best lap. He adapts very, very well to new things," said Richard "Slugger" Labbe, a former Cup crew chief who has served as something of a mentor to Speed during his transition into NASCAR. "I've asked him a lot about that, how come you adapt so quick? He's like, 'This is actually easier, because in F1 there are 17 corners, and here there are four.' He adapts very well to that. He takes criticism well, he listens well. I offer suggestions to him all the time, and he listens. Some people don't listen. He's open, because he wants to learn and wants to get better."

That's the strange thing about Speed, as complex and unique a personality as has come into NASCAR in some time. It's impossible to ignore the flash, the funky style, a dress and an attitude that seem so different from everything else in his new home. Get beyond that, though, and there's a California kid who's gregarious and approachable, who's seemed to not only tolerate but embrace a two-year climb through the ARCA and Craftsman Truck ranks, who loves the motor-home culture that's so reminiscent of his go-kart days. Most importantly, he's a driver who's shown and received the kind of patience that just might make him different from all those other open-wheelers who descended upon NASCAR only to be overcome by a morass of struggle, sponsorship difficulties, and frustration. (Continued)