Keselowski's future held close to vest by Hendrick

There has been rampant speculation in recent weeks about the 2010 fate of Sprint Cup Series drivers Jamie McMurray and Kevin Harvick.

And Martin Truex Jr. drew a few headlines when he announced he would be leaving Earnhardt Ganassi Racing at the end of this season for a new ride at Michael Waltrip Racing.

But the one name that hasn't been mentioned all that much when talk about which driver will potentially move where next season is Brad Keselowski.

Keselowski

And it could just be that Keselowski is the hottest potential free-agent commodity out there -- although Hendrick Motorsports is doing all it can to keep him from becoming a free agent. Keselowski sat down with team owner Rick Hendrick in mid-June and reportedly agreed to a series of exclusive negotiations with him in an effort to ensure that Keselowski gets a full-time Cup ride lined up for next season.

At the time, and on several other occasions in fact, Keselowski made it clear that he believes he is ready for the rigors of a 36-race Cup season -- and nothing he has done on the track before or since has offered evidence contrary to this rightly confident assertion. Hendrick at the time was a little less certain of being able to put Keselowski in a Cup car for the entire 2010 season.

"He'll be running Cup. Whether he'll be running in all of the races or whether he'll be running in 75 percent of them, I don't know yet," Hendrick said then.

Three options

Hendrick is fond of saying there is no room at the inn, but you know how that goes. He also admits to being a used car salesman, and a mighty good one at that. He has his ways of finding room and shelter for those drivers really covets, as he did when he brought Dale Earnhardt Jr. into the Hendrick Motorsports fold two years ago.

His timing is just a little off on Keselowski, though. Keselowski, 25, won his second Nationwide Series race of the season Saturday at Iowa Speedway and also won his first Cup race at Talladega in the spring.

If Keselowski could have put off blossoming another year or two, the case possibly could have been made to end the Earnhardt experiment and insert Keselowski into Hendrick flagship operation that also includes three-time defending Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, four-time champion Jeff Gordon and the apparently ageless Mark Martin. But only if Junior, who deserves at least one more full year to see if the No. 88 team can emerge from its self-induced funk, continues to struggle.

Or if this was three years down the road, it's quite possible that Gordon would be ready to retire and Brad K could have climbed seamlessly into the No. 24 car.

That's all moot, rather pointless speculation at this juncture, however. Earnhardt, whose megastar appeal on the sponsor side dwarfs any shortcomings he may have on the track and grants him a longer leash than other drivers might experience under similar underachieving circumstances at Hendrick, isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Special K

Brad Keselowski passed Kyle Busch with eight laps remaining and went on to win the inaugural Nationwide Series race at Iowa Speedway.

• Complete story
• Video: Final restart
• Video: Victory Lane

Gordon's aching back may eventually force him to retire sooner than some envision, and he's always hinted that he might not drive much past 40 anyway. He'll turn 38 on Tuesday, but currently is in the middle of the hunt for a championship and certainly has no plans to make room for Keselowski next season.

The way Hendrick figured it in June, that left him with three options to retain Keselowski's services under some sort of Hendrick umbrella for next season and perhaps beyond:

• Putting him in a third car at Hendrick-supported Stewart-Haas Racing;

• Assisting him in a full-time ride under owner James Finch, who fielded Keselowski's Cup-winning car in the Aaron's 499 at Talladega earlier this season;

• Teaming with Earnhardt to set up Keselowski in a Cup car fronted -- if not actually funded -- by Earnhardt's JR Motorsports.

It's worth noting that Earnhardt repeatedly has said he does not intend to take Keselowski's current JR Motorsports Nationwide team to Cup next season.

Silence

Hendrick also said in June that he thought NASCAR would allow him to field a fifth car for seven races next season, should that be something that would interest Keselowski -- who then could get with Finch or someone else for the rest of the schedule, or at least several other races.

Meanwhile, Roush Fenway Racing apparently is set to shift McMurray and his No. 26 Ford team to its own less successful satellite operation at Yates Racing (if McMurray is willing to go and doesn't attempt to explore other options himself). Roush Fenway currently fields five teams and must get down to four next season to comply with a NASCAR rule that seems to lose more teeth with every minute of every day.

The rule was put in place supposedly to keep mega-teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Fenway from dominating. But Rick Hendrick's own openness about how he hopes to keep Keselowski under the Hendrick umbrella in any way possible displays how transparent and utterly useless the rule has become.

The bigger teams just seem to be getting bigger, only they go by multiple names. The rich continue to get richer. The best are merging or moving and shaking behind the scenes and under the tables with a wink-wink toward NASCAR's Daytona Beach offices. In these economic times, NASCAR almost certainly would be more than willing to turn a blind eye if a budding star like Brad Keselowski could bring millions of dollars in sponsorship to the sport even if he remains somehow under Hendrick's control.

Of course in these tumultuous times, even with Keselowski's growing star appeal, nothing is a given on the dried-up sponsorship trail.

Meanwhile, silence is golden, and not much has been heard about Keselowski's immediate or long-term Cup future since his "series of exclusive negotiations" with Mr. Hendrick commenced in June.

Other organizations certainly would be willing to line up to give Keselowski a full-time Cup ride. Think Richard Childress Racing couldn't find room for him (possibly at the expense of a disgruntled Harvick or the perennially underachieving Casey Mears)? Or that Joe Gibbs Racing wouldn't launch a fourth car for him? And the departure of Truex at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing for Michael Waltrip Racing already has left an immediate opening at EGR -- the one smaller, mostly independent team that seems to be bucking the odds against the big boys and has been improving on-track performance.

But none of those free-agent scenarios is likely to unfold. Hendrick apparently has a handle on it -- and not only on Keselowski's immediate but also his long-term future.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.

Joe Menzer is the author of "The Great American Gamble: How the 1979 Daytona 500 Gave Birth to a NASCAR Nation." Click here to purchase.