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"I've been spotting for the truck team since the beginning when Bob drove, then Dennis Setzer and now Terry," she said. "When Bob was racing late models, I wasn't 'allowed' in the pits, so I just cheered him on from the grandstands.
"We got married and decided to go ARCA racing. I scored, and as things started to progress to this level and we needed spotters, I sort of moved into that position. Besides, I was the only one that was there all the time," she says with a laugh.
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| Credit: Nate Mecha/HSP |
The 52-year-old mother of two, originally from Dayton, Ohio, has always taken part in her husband's racing, and now it's a family affair. Their son Brian is the jackman for the team and Brad is the sign man. The sons both race at local tracks in Michigan.
She knew racing was going to be a large part of their lives when her first date with Bob was a drag race. It was her first exposure to motorsports, and they've never gotten away from it since.
K Motorsports was one of the original entrants when the NCTS program first developed in 1995. They skipped four races in that inaugural year, but have been in every one since.
The group has put together some pretty impressive statistics through those years with six trips to Victory Lane, 24 top-fives and 62 top-10s. With Cook behind the wheel this year, they've had top-10 finishes in all but one of seven events.
No matter how good a driver is on the track, he'd be nowhere without his spotter. Keselowski worked with her husband when he first drove and credits him for showing her the do's and don'ts of spotting.
"When I first started, he would tell me what he wanted," she said. "You have to change how you do it for each driver, but he taught me to be very calm. It's just like when you're driving in your passenger car, if somebody in the car suddenly gasps or makes an alarming sound, it distracts you.
"He told me that is the one thing you never do as a spotter. I try to stay very calm and it seems to have worked really well with everyone. You can't take your eyes of your truck, except to look a little further ahead of him."
She is very aware of her huge financial, emotional and physical investment into their Truck Series team. Although her first duty is to the driver, she's also watching over the entire operation from the equipment to the people who run it, three of which are family members.
"Being a woman limits me to how much I can do for the race team," she said. "As far as physically at the track, during the race and things like that."
So, when does the NCTS' only full-time female spotter see herself stepping down from her observational perch?
"The day they bury me, is the day I'll quit. I think this is the greatest thing in the world."
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