[Ed's note: The italics after certain sections indicates Scott Speed's personal commentary.]
The red-carpeted VIP section overlooking Pit Lane at the Grand Prix of Brazil flows with Moët, sushi and rail-thin bombshells escorting fat-walleted big shots. (SS: I haven't seen a red carpet, let alone a VIP section, since I left Formula One.) The paddock—garages on one side, hospitality rooms on the other—buzzes with caterers, reporters and crew teams, all speaking in tongues: Italian, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Finnish, the Queen's English…you name it. But American banter? Not a peep.
That changes as the hospitality crew oversees a late breakfast inside the blue-and-white cinder block Toro Rosso team room, when a distinct voice slashes the air. A loud voice.
A loud, American voice. "LUCA! WHEN-A-WE EAT? I'M-A HUNGRY!" With this, a lanky 23-year-old bops through the door. Wearing a baseball cap, iPod earbuds, skate sneakers, baggy and tattered jeans, and a navy blue hoodie, Scott Speed looks like a kid who spends his weekends playing Time Crisis 4 at the video arcade. Chef Luca can't help but laugh at Speed's Italian-comic accent. He knows the driver isn't condescending, just kind of goofy. Speed asks a Toro Rosso hospitality girl, "What time did you get home last night?" She giggles because it's hard not to. Speed pours
himself a glass of juice. "Whoa!" he exclaims after a gulp of mango when he was expecting orange. "What the HELL is that?"
There is nothing subtle about Speed. He is nothing like most Formula One drivers, a group as charismatic as accountants at a tax seminar. He speaks his mind, and it has gotten him into hot water. (SS: True. If I think something, I say it. My whole life, I've never changed for anyone.) Supporters call him passionate and driven; detractors prefer "arrogant" and "asshole." (SS: I'm a lot nicer than I used to be. Arrogant? Maybe. I have lots to learn in stock cars, but I know this. An F-1 driver can drive in NASCAR, but there's no way Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson could compete in an F-1 car. It's incredibly more sophisticated.) It wouldn't be much of an issue if Speed weren't under the microscope. (SS: I love that. I'm not under the microscope anymore. I can be an idiot without a problem!) He's the first American on the F1 circuit since the 1993 season, and he's expected to attract the elusive American fan base. As he heads back out to the track, he talks about the difficulties of being a rookie. (SS: My rookie season has been freaking amazing. The ARCA win in Kansas was cool. But the trucks win in Dover was mega-epic, supercool. A surprise? Yea, I'm not the best trucks driver. Not yet. It did get everyone talking about me painting my toenails blue before the race. I like having someone take care of my feet. Hasn't anyone heard of a pedicure?) "I thought I had to fit in more, be nice to people. Now I realize all the bad things about my personality make me a good driver."
Scott Speed has been a good driver since he was a 10-year-old growing up in Manteca, Calif. (SS: I was a total nightmare as a kid. My poor mom took so much crap from me.) His father, Mike, a three-time national champion in karts, taught him to race one in a parking lot. At Scott's 1993 karting debut, in Prairie City, he started last and finished third. Two years later, he won his first national title. As a teen, he tried to have a normal life, "disco" bowling in his hometown or cruising McHenry Avenue, in nearby Modesto. But it was hard to date and party when he spent almost every weekend packing into a Winnebago—alongside his younger brother, parents, grandmother and dog—and blowing off to tracks like Infineon, Buttonwillow and Willow Springs.
Karting wasn't just a hobby; it was the road to F1. For years, the young Speed would sneak downstairs in the wee Sunday morning hours to catch live races from Monaco, Spain and Germany. That alone set him apart from his peers. (SS: I loved F-1, but I watched a bit of everything. NASCAR, Champ Car.) Formula One has 600 million viewers in 184 nations, but Americans couldn't care less. They prefer fender bending over finesse, hootin' and hollerin' over stuffy sophistication; they like to think of their racing heroes as regular Joes, not some sort of distant royalty. We're a NASCAR country, even if those regular Joes need a whole lot of money behind them. "America is the land of TV and Hollywood," says Speed's Toro Rosso teammate, Tonio Liuzzi. "They like lots of show, crashes. I like to race in America. But for competition, it's better in Europe and F1. For a show, the States. It's just two different ways of racing."
Speed's brazen ways trace back to his father. "They have the same personality," says Scott's brother, Alex. "Dad and Scott would butt heads a lot."
As Mike tells it, "One of our most infamous blowouts happened at the SuperNationals in 2001. Scott had won the year before, so of course he knew it all. I'm setting the car up, and he's driving the piss out of it, burning up all of the tires. He's screaming that it's slow, and I'm screaming that he's driving it too hard. So I grabbed him by the helmet and yelled, 'You have to slow down!' But he's yelling, 'I'll show you!'" (SS: This was just as it happened - a real Days of Thunder screaming match. And worst of all? My dad was right.)
Scott showed everybody, winning back-to-back karting championships at the SuperNats, followed by titles in the Formula Russell, Skip Barber and Formula Mazda open-wheel divisions. But while dominating on American asphalt might lead to a Champ Car or Indy ride, landing an F1 gig—one of the 20 most coveted seats in motorsports—seemed as likely as piloting the space shuttle. That was until 2002, when Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, eager to form an F1 team and find an American driver, hired 1985 Indy 500 winner Danny Sullivan to scour the U.S. for karting talent. Sullivan discovered 13 drivers, including Speed. Some people warned him that Speed had a poor attitude (SS: I don't take advice well. If an instructor told me something I didn't think was right, I'd tell him he was stupid.) , but during a three-day evaluation at the Paul Ricard racing facility in southern France, the kid revealed some other traits. "He was always the quickest," Sullivan recalls. "And he had more than just natural talent—the reflexes, the vision. He had the heart and desire." (SS: Skip Barber told Red Bull, 'You can't take this kid.' But Helmut Marko, an advisor to Red Bull Motorsports, said 'I can teach an attitude, but I can't teach fast.')
Speed's reward? On March 12, 2006, at the Bahrain Grand Prix, he lined up 16th on the grid in his No. 21 Toro Rosso ride, behind the idols he used to watch in his living room: David Coulthard, Jacques Villeneuve and the legendary Michael Schumacher. (SS: The start was intimidating. But I was more nervous at big karting races.) While Speed's car—a 700 hp, 3.0 liter, Cosworth restricted V10—could accelerate from 0 to 160 mph in 3.5 seconds, and brake from 190 to 0 in 2 seconds, little was expected of him. "In F1, there's a different criteria for winning," says Mario Andretti, one of only two Americans to claim the overall F1 championship (in 1978). "It doesn't matter how good you drive. If you're not driving for one of the top three teams, you've got no chance in hell." And Speed wasn't driving for one of those teams. His Toro Rosso equipment was purchased from Minardi, the outfit that had finished last overall three years in a row.
In only his third race, though, Speed made headlines by going tête-à-tête with Coulthard—a member of Red Bull's other (better) F1 team—at the Australian GP. "Knowing what I know now," Speed says, "maybe I would've had a different approach." His approach involved opening his mouth. A lot. Some of what came out included "F-off," prompting Coulthard to smack the brim of Speed's baseball cap. "That almost started a fight," Speed says. "And I get fined $5,000 for 'profane language?'" (SS: David plays politics well. Very English, you know? It was probably stupid for me to do that.)
For the rest of the season, Speed didn't serve up any surprises. He came in ninth Down Under, his best showing, and also had a pair of 10th-place finishes to go along with 4 DNFs in 18 starts. His favorite highlight: the warm reception he got from the diehard American F1 fans at Indianapolis, the lone race on U.S. soil. "It was freaking amazing," he says, even though he crashed before completing a full lap. "I was walking down the street, and people were screaming, 'That's Scott Speed!'" (SS: The whole first year in F-1 was awesome.)
While he won't be on a Wheaties box anytime soon, and the overwhelming majority of American race fans wouldn't recognize him if he sat at their kitchen table, Speed made a bigger-than-expected impression during his rookie season. (SS: My next season was horrible. Team co-owner Gerhard Berger wanted me out. He made my life awful. Gerhard's the meanest, most miserable person I've ever met. He can go f-himself.) "He's done relatively well for his lack of racing," says Coulthard, taking the high road. "He's proven he's the real deal. Whether he's another Schumacher, who knows? There aren't many of them. Next year will tell if he can raise his game and deliver."
(SS: Final straw? I crashed at the 10th race of the season, at Nurburgring. Lots of drivers did; it was pouring. Afterward, team manager Franz Tost started yelling 'WHAT HAPPENED IN TURN 1?' I said 'Same thing that happened to everyone else.' He said, 'NO! JUST THE WANKERS!' I walked off, but he shoved me in the back. The whole team's there, and I'm like 'HIT ME! GO AHEAD!' (Tost's take: 'I grabbed him on the arm and said, 'Please stop, because I want to explain this to you.') That week, Franz called and said, 'We don't need you this weekend.' I said, 'Thank you very much.' And I went to see Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz. He hugged me and said 'I'm so sorry, but what do you want me to do? I said, 'Now that you ask? NASCAR.' Six weeks later, I'm testing at Talladega.)