{"id":1396,"date":"2011-10-31T15:14:10","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T19:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2011-10-31T15:14:10","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T19:14:10","slug":"kenseth-and-team-not-letting-vickers-off-the-hook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2011\/10\/31\/kenseth-and-team-not-letting-vickers-off-the-hook\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenseth and team not letting Vickers off the hook"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www3.pictures.zimbio.com\/gi\/Brian+Vickers+TUMS+Fast+Relief+500+kkoHzbUuZiOl.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"301\" height=\"200\" \/>Brian Vickers was everywhere Sunday afternoon. When a caution came out at Matinsville Speedway the first thing many NASCAR fans grumbled was &#8220;Brian Vickers.&#8221; Vickers hit just about everyone yesterday but when he got bumped from behind after some aggressive driving along side Matt Kenseth he figured the former series Champion deserved a little retaliation.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for Vickers when he actually tries to wreck other cars he&#8217;s not nearly as good at it. <a href=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/2011\/09\/11\/brian-vickers-takes-exception-to-marcos-ambroses-driving\/\">Just ask Marcos Ambrose<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Vickers has been steamed at Kenseth for some time. He &#8216;s been steamed at the #17 since Phoenix when he bumped Kenseth and crashed his car. Vickers in true fashion blamed Kenseth for the accident and even after everyone else said Vickers was at fault the sheriff issued a brief one liner that he may have been at fault.<\/p>\n<p>Vickers hasn&#8217;t forgotten that day.<\/p>\n<p>The #17 team isn&#8217;t about to let Vickers off the hook either after Sunday&#8217;s events. During the race Kenseth&#8217;s sister posted the following on the Matt Kenseth Fan Club Facebook:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Caution&#8217;s out for the 83 &#8230; again. His sponsor should be Timex. Kenseth is back on track.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Following the race Kenseth made the following post race comments about the incident with Vickers.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWith Brian he  just kept hitting me in the door. I mean, we\u2019re at Martinsville and I  gave him the bottom. Obviously, I\u2019m not gonna roll over and let him go  with 40 to go or whatever it was and he just kept driving in harder and  harder and he slammed me in the door at least five times and just ran me  up in the marbles and I was just tired of it, so I spun him out. I  don\u2019t know how you can\u2019t pass somebody here without running into him  every single time when he gives you the bottom and the fastest lane, but  obviously he couldn\u2019t and I was trying to get every position I could at  the end of the race.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Vickers has always seen himself as a sheriff in the NASCAR garage.\u00a0 His fans have always seen Vickers as a guy who will &#8216;keep things in order&#8217; and yet Vickers could do nothing to control his car on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Brian Vickers driving was the subject of tweets all across the country.<\/p>\n<p>Mike Calinoff, Kenseth&#8217;s spotter, promised to give away a hat late Sunday night but with one caveat.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Gonna give away an <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/ms1947\">@<strong>ms1947<\/strong><\/a> Tums 500 Chase hat at 9:30, unless Vickers causes a wreck on I-40 and screws up traffic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course the hat was a prize for a photo caption contest which happened to be a photo of Brian Vickers. After fans tweeted away Calinoff shared a few of his favorites.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>HONORABLE MENTION: RT <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/Harvichick29\">@<strong>Harvichick29<\/strong><\/a>: <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/MikeCalinoff\">@<strong>MikeCalinoff<\/strong><\/a> &#8220;If I can&#8217;t get a ride for next year, none of you can have one either!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>HONORABLE MENTION: RT <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/ashley_herrick\">@<strong>ashley_herrick<\/strong><\/a>: <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/MikeCalinoff\">@<strong>MikeCalinoff<\/strong><\/a> &#8220;That&#8217;s how many cautions i wasn&#8217;t involved in today!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>HONORABLE MENTION: RT <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/WhitePhoenix48\">@<strong>WhitePhoenix48<\/strong><\/a>: <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/MikeCalinoff\">@<strong>MikeCalinoff<\/strong><\/a> &#8220;You were running for a championship? My bad. PARTY TIME!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Kenseth<\/p>\n<p>Later Kenseth retweeted the following from David Newton<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div><span> <a title=\"David Newton \" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/DNewtonespn\">DNewtonespn<\/a> <span>David Newton<\/span><\/span><span><em> by matt_kenseth17<\/em> <\/span><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>Wreck on I-85. No proof yet Brian VIckers involved.  <a title=\"#NASCAR\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#%21\/search?q=%23NASCAR\">#<strong>NASCAR<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In truth Kenseth&#8217;s final finish had little to do with Vickers. He\u00a0 fell out of contention, with a car that had run in the top05 most of the day, when he popped a tire and collected the #18 of Kyle Busch. Contact made on pit road with Kevin Harvick may have been a contributing factor to the tires failure.<\/p>\n<p>Kenseth fell to a distant 5th in the standings. Vickers standings position remained unchanged at 25th. Vickers does not have a ride for 2012.<\/p>\n<p>A clip of Kenseth bumping Vickers into the wall and Vickers subsequent failure at spinning Kenseth can be seen below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Vickers was everywhere Sunday afternoon. When a caution came out at Matinsville Speedway the first thing many NASCAR fans grumbled was &#8220;Brian Vickers.&#8221; Vickers hit just about everyone yesterday but when he got bumped from behind after some aggressive driving along side Matt Kenseth he figured the former series Champion deserved a little retaliation. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[104,409,417],"coauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"tag-brian-vickers","8":"tag-martinsville-speedway","9":"tag-matt-kenseth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}