Vickers proud of second place

Vickers led a race for the fourth time this season and was in control for 18 laps partly due to a different strategy from other front-runners, but also thanks to his good pace, which allowed him in the end to get his best result of the year.

The Red Bull driver was leading the field on the final restart of the 500-mile event, but he was unable to hold off a charging Kasey Kahne, who was running fresher rubber than him following a later pitstop.

"I was hoping that there would be more cars that stayed out, or those tyres would hold [race-winner Kasey Kahne] off," Vickers said. "Clean aero is huge in these cars absolutely huge, but I knew we had a great car. But, tyres were important too.

"It was tough. When I saw him in my mirror, I wouldn't say it was over, but I knew it was going to be tough. If we could have just stayed in front of him, or got far enough ahead of him to stay in front of him for another five or six laps, I thought the tyres would even out and we would hold him off.

"But, he was still too fast and the tyres were too good."

The 24-year-old believes his team has slowly but steadily moved up the field and feels they are heading in the right direction following some key personnel changes at the beginning of the season.

"Some of it's just time," Vickers said. "You can't replace time and experience. Some of it is people, and in this sport, it's all about people. Jay Frye (general manager, Red Bull Racing Team) coming on board has been great leadership from the top.

"It always starts from the top down, but there's been a lot of other people. Jay has been a large part of it, but I don't want to give him all the credit. There's a lot of people that have come on board and a lot of great people that are still there from last year that just have not been able do what they wanted to do.

"Or, maybe it just wasn't the right time or place or maybe they didn't have the right guidance for leadership from the top. All around the team is growing and getting better, stronger and better people are coming on board."

AJ Allmendinger rounded up a good day for the team at Pocono with a 12th place finish, although his strategy, which was different to Vickers', probably prevented him from finishing higher up in the order where he had run most of the afternoon.