Race Weekend Central

Brian Vickers Partners with Janssen to Race at Auto Club Speedway

After competing in two of the first four races of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, Brian Vickers will return to the No. 14 car at Auto Club Speedway.

Vickers, 32, will run the No. 14 Chevrolet for Stewart-Haas Racing for the third time this year. After being approved by NASCAR and doctors to run the Sprint Unlimited and Daytona 500, he was named as an interim driver in place of the injured Tony Stewart, along with Ty Dillon.

Joining Vickers at Auto Club Speedway will be Janssen, which owns the blood thinner Xarelto. While he was attempting to fight off reoccurring blood clots, doctors placed him on the medication, including at the end of the 2013 season and early last year.

Janssen was scheduled to sponsor Vickers last year at Auto Club Speedway, but as the weekend approached, his blood clots came back. Brett Moffitt replaced him in Michael Waltrip Racing’s No. 55 car that weekend, staying in the car until David Ragan finished out the season for the team.

Vickers’ paint scheme will feature the blue and yellow colors of legendary golfer Arnold Palmer’s Arnie’s Army Charitable Foundation. The two have partnered multiple times, including filming a commercial with actor Kevin Nealon.

It is still unknown how many races Vickers will be in the No. 14 Chevrolet. Dillon is scheduled to be in the car whenever Bass Pro Shops is the primary sponsor. Vickers is expected to pilot the car whenever Mobil 1, Rush Truck Centers and Code 3 Associates is on the car.

Stewart is expected to start his rehabilitation process shortly, according to a team release last year. He was injured in an off-road vehicle accident late in the offseason, suffering a L1 vertebra burst fracture. Stewart had surgery later that week and has since been seen at the track.

About the author

Joseph started with Fronstretch in Aug. 2014 and worked his way up to become an editor in less than a year. A native of Whitestone, New York, Joseph writes for NASCAR Pole Position magazine as a weekly contributor, along with being a former intern at Newsday and the Times Beacon Record Newspapers, each on Long Island. With a focus on NASCAR, he runs our social media pages and writes the NASCAR Mailbox column, along with other features for the site.

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