Speed honed his craft for two years with Red Bull Racing in the NASCAR Cup Series, with a fifth-place finish at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway in 2009 his best result. Red Bull dropped Speed after 2010 and shuttered its NASCAR program a year later.
Speed again found himself at a crossroads. He toiled in backmarker equipment for a couple of years before, for the second time, he opted for a new form of motorsports. The ex-Formula One, ex-NASCAR driver gave rallycross a shot.
And, he hasn’t looked back.
Speed joined Olsbergs MSE’s Global RallyCross Championship team for 2013 and won his debut race. Two years later, he signed with Andretti Autosport and won three straight GRC titles from 2015-’17.
Now a member of Subaru Rally Team USA, Speed is with one of the sport’s most well-liked, successful teams and has the support of a factory organization with a family atmosphere. The only thing that slowed Speed in 2020 was a global pandemic and economic downturn, which nearly brought rallycross to its knees.
Oh, and a crash that broke Speed’s back at the Nitro World Games in August of 2019 didn’t help, either.
Sixteen months after fracturing three vertebrae while landing a jump during a qualifying session — in which he continued on and finished third — Speed said he feels better than ever. He credits what he jokingly referred to as “a revolutionary weight-loss regimen” for his improved level of fitness.
“It’s very simple,” Speed explained. “I exercise and I burn more calories than I put in. That’s all it took.”
It took a bit more to stand out in his third full-time career choice.
Speed hit the ground running once he got with Olsbergs and later Andretti, but wins and championships required more than raw talent.
“With the open-wheel stuff, I got to such a high level that I enjoyed the ability to start over again,” Speed said. “After I’d already done it once (with NASCAR), it became easier for me to adapt (to rallycross). And, I’m a lifelong learner. I love to learn new things. As a driver, you’re always collecting as much information from everywhere you can. You can never know everything on your own, so my approach has always been that if I want to do something great, get around the best people at it and see what it takes.
“For rallycross, I was teamed up with (X Games gold medalist) Tanner Foust for the majority of my early career and he’s your quintessential rally guy. I was inherently good on anything on tarmac that required a driving style similar to a sports car, but Tanner was very good at everything on gravel or dirt. It was one of those lucky deals where we were very good teammates, we learned a lot from each other for five years and we made each other better.”
Speed’s years of rallycross knowledge —– coupled with an enthusiastic desire to contribute — should help Subaru’s team as it chases more rallycross success.
“Subaru is a full rallycross team in the sense that they build engines and chassis,” Speed said. “At Andretti, the chassis guys and engine guys were separate, so you only had so much input on the car. At Subaru, everything on that car is built in Vermont. I can be there and have more influence and can physically touch more pieces of the puzzle that help us win.”
To no one’s surprise, Speed still has a couple of racing disciplines he wants to experience once he’s hit his stride with Subaru.
“I definitely want to try stage rallying at some point,” Speed said. “When the time comes and the situation presents itself, I’d love to be able to do that with Subaru. I’ve been to DirtFish (Rally School in Washington) and done some preliminary work, which was super interesting. Now, it’s just about finding the right time to do it, but that’s a desire purely from the perspective of having fun. My main focus is still what we’re doing with rallycross. Aside from that, I’d still really like to do the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring.”
If Speed can swing the 24-hour Nurburgring race, he’d be back at the site of his last F-1 start but in a different type of car, with years of additional knowledge and seat time at his disposal.
“I don’t know what it is about doing new things,” Speed said. “It’s not about being the best at something. I just want to prove to myself that I can do something. That’s why I try it.”