Scott Speed will drive a partial Sprint Cup Series schedule for Leavine Family Racing this season, focusing mostly on the 1.5-mile tracks and road courses. Team owner Bob Leavine was impressed with Speed’s ability to out-qualify his car last season with inferior equipment and decided to give the ex-Formula One racer a shot. The team plans to avoid start-and-parking if possible and run the full races it enters, beginning with the Texas Motor Speedway race in April. ‘You can make more money doing (start-and-parks), for sure, but that’s not what Bob wants to do,’ Speed said Tuesday night. ‘We want to be professional about it. We ‘re going to look good, we ‘re going to have all of our stuff right and represent our brand and what we ‘re doing the right way and not just be another start-and-park team.’ Leavine gets its engines from Roush Fenway Racing (on a lower tier) and buys used Roush cars to field its #95 entry (which David Starr drove last season). ‘We ‘re going about it the right way as much as you can be,’ Speed said. ‘We ‘re not a fully-funded team that’s running a full year. But instead of doing a lot, we ‘re doing what we can and doing it right. If we ‘re running well, the pedal is to the floor.’ The team won ‘t run the superspeedway races, because that requires buying a special car and hoping it survives a crapshoot race. But it will purchase a car for the road courses, Speed said, because those events are ‘probably more in our control.’(SB Nation)
AND ‘There are a lot of great drivers who don ‘t have a ride,’ said Speed. ‘It’s a tough time in our sport and I am lucky to have the opportunity here at Levine Family Racing because it’s one of the good ones out there. We are doing 16 races and we are going to do them right including the two road course races. We are going to go out and race when we have the ability to run and run it right.’(CMS Media Tour Notes)(1-26-2012)
