Driver Profile

The prodigious career of Brian Vickers dates back to the age of 10, when he began racing go-karts. Before graduating to the Allison Legacy Cars Series in 1998, Vickers left go-karts a three-time national champion and accumulated 83 career victories.

"My love of racing developed early, but it wasn't until I grew older that I really began to give any consideration to racing as a career," Vickers said. "My parents and I spent much of our time at the races and I missed out on a lot of things growing up, but looking back I don't regret any of it because I love what I'm doing now."

While in the Allison series, he captured five wins in just one season before advancing to NASCAR's Weekly Racing Series where the 16-year-old continued to turn heads. By the end of 1999, Vickers had six Late Model wins and 11 pole awards.

"Every race was a learning experience and I did the best job I could to absorb as much information as possible from other racers and the people around me," Vickers explained. "I was only 16, but my age really didn't seem to matter to the other competitors. To them I was just another driver."

Hardly. He was the 1999 "Rising Star of the Year" as voted by Motorsports Magazine. In 2000, he joined the highly competitive USAR ProCup Series. During his first year in ProCup, Vickers won two races and became the youngest winner in series history, also taking home rookie of the year honors at the banquet.

In 2001, Vickers once again captured two ProCup wins and finished second in the point standings.

Vickers made his Busch Series debut in 2001 at Milwaukee. An early accident took him out of contention after just 54 laps, but Vickers did compete in three more Busch Series races in 2001 before making 21 Busch starts in 2002 with a family-owned team. His best career result came at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway, finishing seventh after starting 38th.

"I learned a lot during the 2002 season," Vickers' said. "We progressed every race and toward the end of the season we really started to click and were able to put together some strong runs. Finishing the season in the manner I did makes me hungry for 2003."

That hunger would be satisfied in 2003, as Vickers became the youngest Busch Series champion in history, winning the honor at the ripe-old age of 20.

"From the beginning, our goals were simple -- finish every lap and try to stay out of trouble. If we did those things, we knew everything else would take care of itself.

"We never changed our goals and just tried to keep it simple."