Keselowski turning big break into career catapult

Brad Keselowski was standing in the shop overlooking about 20 racecars, all at different stages in their lives. But the majority of them would only require an engine dropped under the hood and fresh Goodyears bolted on to be nearly race-ready at any moment.

His voice was clouded by the sound of air wrenches whirling, accompanied by the occasional beat-beat of a hammer. A muffled conversation was his vocal backdrop.

Brad Keselowski

Stats with JR Motorsports

Race	Start	Finish	Status
Chicago	33	14	running
Gateway	28	26	running
ORP	15	10	running
Michigan	28	13	running
Bristol	18	7	running
California	24	35	crash
Richmond	15	38	running
Dover	23	7	running
Kansas	22	36	crash
Charlotte	35	11	running
Averages	24.1	19.7

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"I'm standing here in the shop and we just had a meeting with 65 employees who work on the race team," Keselowski said from the floor of JR Motorsports' complex in Mooresville, N.C. "There's every bit of 20 racecars in front of us that can be ready to go in a day or two's notice."

Keselowski stopped, thought back to last year's partial schedule and the beginning of this season before he continued. "We used to be lucky to have two," he said, referring to the total number of chassis that sat in the shops of the low-budget teams for which he used to drive.

Life has certainly changed for the 23-year-old. What a difference a year makes? Try six months. "There's no real comparison at all," he said.

Keselowski has taken the typical "work your way up" route, driving for small-budget teams that operated with limited personnel -- sometimes with as few as four full-time employees. He drove two and a half years for his father, completing the entire 2005 Truck Series season for the family operation where he once worked full time in the shop. In seven other Truck starts scattered along the way, Keselowski has driven for four different owners.

He drove 20 Busch Series races for owner Keith Coleman, including the first 13 races this season. But lack of funding forced the outfit to shut down and it's currently selling off all equipment.

Keselowski, the man, hasn't changed. He's still the clean-faced Michigan native with that regional accent who is eager to go Cup racing one day -- quickly.

It's his surroundings that have altered, giving the former quarter midget racer his chance to shine in big-time equipment -- slowly.

It would have been difficult for Keselowski to script it any better. Ted Musgrave got suspended for the Truck Series race in Memphis back in June. Germain Racing needed a fill-in for the former champion. Keselowski obliged.

With championship-caliber equipment under the hood, he was second during the first practice, second during the second practice. Then he won the pole. He led 62 laps and was pacing the field with seven laps remaining on a storybook ending until Travis Kvapil made contact with Keselowski's truck, sending Keselowski spinning to a 16th-place finish.

The voicemails poured in, including one from Dale Earnhardt Jr.

"Dale Jr. and everybody were all watching the race and called me up afterward," Keselowski said. "They told me I got robbed. He said, 'You know, I'm looking for a driver, why don't you hop in my car and run it?' It just all worked out from there.

"It was the break I'd been looking for my whole career, to have that opportunity. It's like an audition every time you get in a quality ride when you don't have a full-time ride. So yeah, it was an audition, there's no doubt about that."

Little did Keselowski know but the whole No. 88 team had their eyes on him well before that.

"Dale Jr. had been watching him a little while and made the remark several times, 'I think that kid will be a pretty good driver,'" said Tony Eury Sr., JR Motorsports' director of competition and interim crew chief on the 88 car. "He just kept watching him. He walked in here one day and said, 'I think we need to make a change in our driver and I think I'm going to see if I can get this kid to come in here and drive.' He said, 'Ya'll need to watch him; I think he's pretty good.' It was that week that he ran Musgrave's truck and ran so good. From them on, he said, 'I better get him now or somebody's going to get him for sure.' We decided to give him a try."

The initial offer with Earnhardt's team was a three-race trial basis. That transformed into a deal that runs through the end of this season, partly because of Keselowski's finishes. He's had three top-10s in the 10 races driving JR Motorsports' No. 88 Chevrolet. Now he's in preliminary talks of a multi-year contract with the team.

Still, Eury said the team is trying to corral Keselowski's gung-ho attitude and transfer it into consistent finishes, completing all the laps and that P-word no young driver likes to hear.

"He's got to be patient and let this thing come around," Eury said. "He wants to do good. Everything takes time and everybody has their little learning period. That's what we've tried to preach to him, to be calm, just go out here and run all the laps and get all the experience you can. That day will come. He is determined to run up front. He's not waiting on that time; he wants to do it now."

That showed once that three-race trial period was over. After finishing in the top 15 in four of his first five races at JR Motorsports, he then crashed in three of the next four events. The first incident -- a fiery wreck at California -- wasn't his doing as another car clipped Keselowski's and sent him hard into the fence. But the other two -- at Richmond and at Kansas -- were.

Keselowski secretly struggled with the on-track product. The team parted ways with crew chief Wes Ward, a tough move considering Ward's direction of the operation and in helping the team move into its new shop last year. That's when Eury stepped in as the top man on the pit box before the Charlotte race. Keselowski finished 11th. The guiding hand of the veteran Eury will be with young Keselowski for the remainder of the season.

Now the focus moves back to Memphis for Saturday's Sam's Town 250, back to where Keselowski's audition run landed him where he's at today and potentially for the near future.

"I'm sure it tickled him to death when he got that phone call and the same day he walked into the shop," Eury said of when the team originally reached out to Keselowski. "There's a lot of equipment here -- a lot of new equipment -- and a lot of people that he's not used to being around. So I guarantee you it would give you a little blood rush when you walk in and see it."

"It's nuts," Keselowski admitted. But he quickly reminded that that was yesterday. This is today.

"You kind of live for today," he said. "I try not to look back. I guess I should look back because I would be pretty happy with what's gone down."