Brian Vickers On The State Of His Health, NASCAR And The Union

Last year, I wondered if what people said about Brian Vickers was really true: That the driver was exceptionally knowledgeable about a variety of different subjects that went far beyond racing.

I’d heard bits and pieces of Vickers’ thoughts on the environment and about business, but still wasn’t quite sure if his thoughts on those topics stemmed from a casual interest or were of a more in-depth nature.

So while traveling on a motorboat toward a Red Bull seaplane as part of a media event a year ago, I struck up a conversation with Vickers about an article I’d just read about the fall of Iceland’s economy.

To be honest, I had never heard of anything about Iceland’s economy before spotting the aforementioned story in a magazine. I figured if Vickers knew about the problems with the Krona (the Icelandic currency), it was evidence he probably knew about a lot of other stuff, too.

To my surprise, Vickers knew exactly what I was talking about and was able to even expand on the subject.

Now that Vickers has announced he’ll miss the rest of the season due to taking blood-thinning medication to treat blood clots found in his lungs and leg, he has plenty of time to explore his many interests beyond racing.

In a lengthy sit-down interview with SB Nation on Saturday morning, Vickers shared his thoughts on his health, NASCAR, the economy and more.

Here’s Brian Vickers, in his own words:

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In terms of my health, nothing’s really changed. It’s still the same. We’ve gotten some more tests back, and everything is negative, which is good. We’re still waiting to get more tests back, and it’s still going to be six months (until driving the car again).

(On planning to learn by watching races from different angles) I don’t think anything I do is going to be earth-shattering. I’ve been racing at this level now for seven years. I don’t think I’m going to see something that’s like, ‘Oh my God! I didn’t know that happened.’ But at the same time, there may be something I can pick up on. There may be something I can learn from the spotter stand to better understand Chris (Lambert’s) job as a spotter, for me to understand more what he’s saying when he clears me or says this or that. Maybe I can get a better handle on it.

Or being on the pit box, understanding more what those guys go through when the caution comes out and I’m talking to them. And what the pit crew is doing, how much time they need to get ready. There’s a lot of things I think I’ll learn little stuff about, but I don’t think anything at this point in my career is going to be like, ‘Oh my God! Stop the presses! I had no idea that happened!’

To be honest with you, a lot of it is just perception. The truth is, I’m probably not going to learn a whole lot (from watching). I may learn some things, and that’s my goal – to learn some stuff for next year. But the reality is that the perception (will be) if I’m not there, then I don’t care.

There’s definitely some stuff I want to do, whether it’s sporting events or just traveling. I’m pretty bummed about not being in the car – like, very. But the more time that passes, I realize I’ve got an incredible opportunity in the middle of my career to take six months off. That doesn’t happen very often.

Most people, in any job in the middle of their career, you work so hard. And by the time you work hard enough to retire and have the money and the time to go do all that stuff, you don’t have the energy any more. You’re a different age, a different place in your life. It’s rare to have an opportunity like this at this point in your career, whether you drive race cars or whatever you do, to take off and go do some stuff you want to do. I think ultimately by doing that, I’ll be a better race car driver when I get back.

I talk to my peers all the time about it: You love what you do, but you always want (the time) to do something else. Like, hey, you know, I’ve always wanted to go to Wimbledon. Or, hey, I’ve always wanted to spend weeks in Europe or go to China – whatever your interests are. Go to Hawaii and surf – now, obviously I’m restricted on that because I’m on (blood) thinners. There’s a lot of things I can’t do. I can’t go skydiving in Australia. But there are things I can do, and it’s rare to have that opportunity in the middle of your career. And so, I intend on using that.

When I get back, I want to have a lot of things checked off my list so this is the only thing on my mind. I think that’ll help my racing as much as sitting on the pit box. I think both are important the next six months. I’ll learn some things sitting on the pit box, but if I do it every week, I’ll be just as burned out as I was before. I’m going to take some time to get some stuff off my plate so when I do come back, I can say, ‘I’ve done that. I’m good.’

Toward the end of last year and this year, NASCAR has made a lot of changes that have needed to be made. Sports can’t grow indefinitely. We’d all like for them to and we all constantly try to make gains, but it just doesn’t happen. Even the NFL, the biggest, eventually is going to reach a saturation point. I don’t necessarily think that we’re there, but a lot of things have happened here in the last 10 years.

I’ve got a Winston firesuit. And I’ve seen a lot of changes, from not racing back to yellows, to the COT, a whole laundry list of changes I’ve seen happen just in my career. Some good, some bad, but I don’t think any of them were made with the intention of hurting the sport. Some of them may not have been good for the sport, but I think the intention to try to make things better has always been there.

I don’t think NASCAR has ever said, ‘We think our ratings are too high, so we’re going to do this.’ But this past year, I think they’ve done a really good job of bringing things that the fans wanted. From double-file restarts to allowing the drivers to express more emotion.

You know, when guys get out of the race car, if they want to go at it, I think they should be able to. I’d rather them go at it on pit road than on the racetrack. But I think NASCAR just kind of allowing drivers to express more emotion is a good thing, because there’s a lot of emotion in this sport. There’s a lot of emotion in life. There’s a limit, there’s always a responsibility, but listen – this is a high-emotion sport. And to try to put these drivers in a box and cage them, I don’t think that’s good for the entertainment of the sport, I don’t think it’s good for anybody. And NASCAR is trying to let it out.

It’s been bottlenecked for awhile now, because drivers want to be themselves but get tired of being fined for it. There’s guys in that garage I don’t always agree with, but I think their personalities are great for the sport. I don’t want to see them go away. I think they should be given more freedom to be themselves. Even though I’m not that way, I think it’s good for the sport.

I feel like we’re going back in the right direction. I think the sport’s future is bright. The racing is as good as it’s ever been. You talk about the attendance and ratings and stuff, but don’t forget that a lot of this happened because of the recession, too. All sports across the board are down – it’s not just our sport. I don’t think you can say ‘NASCAR’s ratings and attendance are down,‘ you say ‘Sports ratings and attendance are down.’ That’s just part of going through the recession we just went through.

I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet with the economy. Unfortunately we’re in an environment now for business that’s pretty rocky. The system is built on confidence, and when the government keeps changing the rules, it makes it very difficult to have any certainty in the future.

You look at the stock market or someone trying to get a loan for a business, someone trying to start a business, and they have no idea what new tax or law the government is going to enact. They try to write a business plan, but in six months it doesn’t matter because they’ve changed some ridiculous law to encourage you not to succeed.

The amount of money the government is spending, how big the federal government is getting is scary. The amount of control they have on our lives now scares the crap out of me. I still think American capitalism is still one of the best systems in the world, but we’re slowly ruining it as fast as we possibly can.

It cracks me up. If you extrapolate where we’re at now to the direction this current administration is taking this country, I’m not going to say we’re Russia right now, but if we keep going down this path, we will be. We’re headed toward far left socialism. And God bless ‘em, no one’s going to say it wouldn’t be great for everyone to be equal. But that’s not a reality. That’s not going to work. That system has been tried many, many times before. And it keeps failing. So why we think we’re going to change it this time is beyond me.

The reality is, if you encourage people not to work, they won’t. If you encourage people not to succeed, they won’t. Trust me. We’ve seen this movie before, and we’re headed down that path.

I don’t have all the answers, but it scares me how much control the federal government has over our lives. They control your money, they control the banks. They’re writing new laws every day to control how you get your money, when you get your money and how you can spend it, who you can get it from. At a federal level – which the founding fathers never intended – they control the educational system, so they control the way you think and the way your kids think. Have you read a middle school or high school textbook lately? It’s astonishing what’s in there. My parents used to say the same things about my textbook, but now I’m looking at my nephew’s textbook and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It’s not even close to reality.

So they control the way you think, they control the way you spend your money and now they control your health. The federal government controls your life. We’ve seen that movie before, too, and I don’t think I need to tell you how that works out.

I don’t get it. I do believe in this country and I think we’ll come out of this, but some of the decisions being made right now scare me. On the bright side, it seems like the people are standing up and finally saying, ‘We’ve had enough.‘ Every time a congressman or senator comes up for re-election, the incumbent is out. The people are saying, ‘We’re tired of you spending our money, we’re tired of you trying to control our lives,’ and they’re voting these people out. And that’s fantastic.

I just hope they don’t lose their resolve and forget for the next major election cycle. The economy is coming back. Ultimately our system is still better than most. Capitalism has done more to raise the standard of living for the top and the bottom than any system in world history. You can say whatever you want, but any social or economic level in this country is still better than anywhere else.

The market wants to succeed. People want to invest their money, people want to grow their businesses, people are ready to go. But every chance they get, the government changes the rules again. The market started to go and they passed this health care bill. It crashed. Then the market started to go again and they passed this financial reform bill and basically took control of the banks and now everyone is scared again. (The attitude is), ‘I don’t want to succeed right now, I just want to take my money and put it under the mattress. Because if I try to do anything with it, it’s going to be gone and they’re going to take it from me.’

If the government would just get out of the way and let the system work and just step back and remove themselves, within reason, the system will work. We will come out of the recession, there will be another boom. But not so long as Congress keeps writing trillion-dollar checks and passing reform bills every month that change the rules of the game.

I’m pretty bummed about the oil spill. It’s pretty depressing what’s happened. I don’t really understand that industry and what it takes to clean that up to really make a sound opinion on it. Obviously, they’re not doing a good job. Something failed, there were systems in place that didn’t work. It shouldn’t have happened to begin with, and they’ve done a horrible job of managing it.

Obama’s gotten a free pass on this deal, it seems like. President Bush was the devil two days after Katrina, and here we are a month later and no one has said anything about how the government has handled this. It’s astonishing to me. And ultimately, I do believe it’s BP’s responsibility, but if they can’t manage this, then the government should. Or they should at least be helping. That’s why I pay a ton of money in taxes. Where’s my money going? Go do something instead of just standing around watching it.

As far as the spill itself, it sucks. What’s going on is depressing, I think that’s the best word to describe it. I don’t really understand the technology enough to say what they’re doing right and wrong. Maybe they’re doing the best that can be done or maybe they’re doing the worst that can be done. I don’t know, but it’s getting pretty bad. From what I’ve seen, it’s probably a lot worse than the media and the White House are leading us to believe.

Then the next question is, people are going to question whether we should stop having oil wells. The same people who are going to be protesting oil wells in the Gulf are the same ones who drive their cars to the protest. If everyone was willing to park their cars tomorrow and not buy groceries at the grocery store, for example – because by the way, groceries get to the grocery store via truck – then perhaps we could shut all of them down. But until that day happens and we have an alternative, it’s a necessary evil.

The less production we produce here domestically, the more money we send to our enemies and the more we destabilize the political landscape around the world. There’s some people making some really tough decisions right now, and I wouldn’t want to be them, for sure. I do know that.

To recap what we’ve talked about, we’ve covered a lot of broad stuff. Most of these items, it’s hard to dip your toe in – you usually have to get pretty in-depth. I’m really bummed about not being in the race car, but I think it’s my personality – I’m trying to make the most out of it, I’m trying to make a positive out of it. In politics, I still think America is the greatest country on the planet. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But I do have a lot of concerns about the direction our country is heading right now. As far as the economy, we have a strong, resilient economy. We have a lot of entrepreneurs out there who are trying to succeed. And I think NASCAR has some of the best racing it’s ever had in history of the sport.

I plan on taking the next six months for myself. Some of it’s going to be for myself here at the track, and some of it’s not. This whole experience has been an eye-opener for me to really step back and evaluate my life, inside and outside of racing. Sitting on that pit box watching the cars go around the track made me realize how bad I really wanted it and what I’m willing to do to get it. I’m really looking forward to getting back on the track next year.