Vickers Doesn’t Rule Out Sports Car Return

While it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, Brian Vickers said Friday upon his return to NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racing as an injury fill-in for Tony Stewart that he’d still love to return to sports car racing down the road.

The 32-year-old American has been frequently sidelined for parts of the last six seasons due to blood clots, and has only twice ran a full Sprint Cup season since 2010.

However, he made his sports car debut in 2012, in three races with the jointly entered AF Corse-Waltrip entry into the inaugural season of the FIA World Endurance Championship.

He raced at the Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, 24 Hours of Le Mans and Six Hours of Bahrain in a Ferrari F458 Italia. He finished sixth in class at Le Mans, and ended a career-high second at Bahrain in the GTE-Am class, driving with Rob Kauffman and Rui Aguas.

Such an encore is unlikely anytime soon given the Michael Waltrip Racing team has dissolved and Kauffman has now become an partner in Chip Ganassi Racing.

But Vickers thoroughly enjoyed his time in sports cars, and wants to return at some point before his career is over.

“What my racing career is now, if you’d asked me six months ago, I had no idea,” Vickers told reporters Friday at Daytona International Speedway. “I wasn’t gonna get in something where I got in where I didn’t think I would win.

“But I knew I’d race again… in something. I love racing, and maybe it was sports cars. I still wouldn’t rule that out. I’d love to do that again someday, because I loved my time there.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Vickers has never started a Rolex 24 at Daytona, as several of his NASCAR contemporaries have done.