Brad Keselowski doesn’t know where he’s going. Driving a golf cart as his wife, Paige, rides shotgun, he pulls out of the motorcoach lot at Chicagoland Speedway and tries to pick a destination, the only problem being he doesn’t have one.
“I have no idea where to go,” he says as he turns left onto the main road that runs through the middle of the infield. He wants to go to the campsite of a big fan of his, and the only way to identify such a site right now is by the flags flying above them.
“I saw one flag today when I was out for a walk,” Paige says.
“Where at?”
“Right over here in the campground,” she says, pointing toward Turn 2.
Sometimes it’s easier than this. These almost weekly visits to campsites have become well-known enough that fans often use Facebook and Twitter to invite Brad, Paige and their daughter, Scarlett (she’s not here this weekend), to their sites. At Bristol, someone planted homemade signs directing them to their site. But golf carts aren’t allowed in the campgrounds there, so as much as Brad and Paige wanted to reward that effort and creativity with a visit, they couldn’t. Tonight, Brad and Paige decided to just jump in their golf cart and drive around searching.
Sometimes getting back from the site is as much of an adventure as getting there. The power gauge on the cart stopped working, and last week at Richmond, the battery ran out. They abandoned the dead cart and jumped on a trolley with a whole mess of surprised fans for the mile-and-a-half ride back to their motorcoach.
The power gauge still doesn’t work.
‘Everybody wins’
Keselowski is looking for a campsite, but he’s also on a quest for something much deeper than that: an authentic connection with fans. Many encounters between drivers and fans can lack deep interaction. Take, for example, the ubiquitous rushed autograph given by a driver hustling through the garage. The driver is trying to walk and sign at the same time; if he or she even sees the face of the person for whom he or she is signing, the driver often does not get a good enough look to remember that person 30 seconds later.
Keselowski tells a story about an encounter that happened earlier that day. “There was this kid outside the motorhome lot. We pulled in, and we were just doing a quick in and out. This kid was yelling for us. His dad yelled, Stop, stop, stop. It’s for the kid. It made me kind of feel bad. I said, Hold on, we’ll be back, I’ve got to make a stop.
“As we were driving away from him, and I already told him we’d be back, he was just getting louder, How can you not stop for the kid? It’s for the kid. Ten minutes later, I went to sign the stuff for the kid. And it was one of these false interactions where the dad had all the stuff and it was definitely for Dad. Dad had four die-casts, two hats and collectibles that obviously the kid is never going to get to play with,” he says. “That does jade you from time to time. There’s no doubt about it.”
MORE: All of Keselowski’s Cup wins
Those are “nobody wins” situations, Keselowski says. The solution for those false interactions is not to give up on them but to instead create real ones to counteract them. “That’s why I like these settings,” he says as he scans the grounds of Chicagoland Speedway for a good site to visit. “These are meant to be everybody wins.”
In the year-plus since the Keselowskis started visiting campgrounds, their excursions have grown in popularity. A typical Facebook Live video from one trip will be viewed between 50,000 and 100,000 times, he says. The video from this one reached 97,000 in the first six days. Keselowski says that broadcasting the visits extends the connections he forms at the campsite out to fans across NASCAR Nation. While they aren’t there physically, Keselowski says, the video allows them to see, hear and, in a sense, take part in the interaction.
Keselowski wrote on his blog that the combination of an American flag and a Miller Lite flag is the equivalent of a bat signal when he’s on the hunt for a site. A cardboard cutout is a big magnet, too — to get a cutout to a campsite takes work and/or planning, which he wants to reward with a visit. As he drives the golf cart, he points over to his right, where he sees an American flag and a No. 2 Miller Lite flag flapping softly in the breeze. That is probably the one Paige saw on her walk. That would be a good one, but it’s too easy.
He drives through the tunnel that goes under the track and turns right, so now he’s driving on a service road outside the track but still on Chicagoland Speedway property. He is running parallel to the backstretch, going in the opposite direction he’ll drive tomorrow during the race. “I was hoping there’d be one up there,” he says, pointing to the overlook behind the backstretch where a few trailers are parked. “But I don’t see one.”
He turns left into a campground, and the collective, kaleidoscope mind of NASCAR Nation unfurls before him. Flags, signs, cutouts and banners are everywhere. He takes the sport’s temperature while he’s out here. These visits have taught him that the support for Chase Elliott and Jimmie Johnson, in particular, has grown, if the number of their flags is any indication. Fans usually want to talk about whatever the news of the day is. It’s worth noting that this venture comes the day after an instantaneously infamous Twitter dust-up between Keselowski, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin, yet nobody brings that up.
These sojourns have taught Keselowski why fans root for him. Sometimes fans like him because they like Miller Lite. Sometimes it’s because they used to be Rusty Wallace fans, and now they follow Keselowski because he’s in the car Wallace used to be in. Other fans like the way he drives or his attitude or the way he uses social media. Keselowski sometimes learns, too, why fans don’t like him … and the reasons are often the same: Because of the way he drives, because of his attitude, because of how he uses social media.
He also learns that NASCAR fans are a little loopy. He passes a pickup truck. In the back of a pickup truck are a bunch of men. One of them is leaning against the cab and waving to other campers as if he’s a beauty contestant. That man is wearing a long black wig and sunglasses and is dressed like Danica Patrick.
Keselowski turns right into the heart of the campground … and there it is. A campsite with Miller Lite flags, an American flag and a stand-up advertisement — the trifecta of what he’s looking for. That’s the one, he decides.
“Now we’ve got to go and hide real quick,” he says as he darts the cart to the right behind a row of Port-A-Johns. Because he’s going to broadcast this on Facebook Live, he wants to control his entrance — he doesn’t want to be seen before he’s ready to be seen.
He drives up five sites and stops. “Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2 blares from a campsite across the way. Nobody there or in any of the adjacent sites realizes who has made a pit stop there. Using her phone, Paige turns on Facebook Live and starts filming. Brad narrates an opening line, and then he backs out of his spot and drives up to the site.
As Keselowski parks, his heart skips a beat. The arrival makes him as nervous as a teenage boy asking a girl out for the first time. He’s pretty sure she’ll say yes, but there’s a delicious bit of tension. All the evidence that he is their favorite driver is there. But he never really knows. “What if they’re, like, ‘Go away?’ And the other part of me is like, ‘I hope they’re excited, but not too excited,’ ” he says. “I’m looking at them as nervous and excited as they are to me. What if it was like, ‘Aahh, I’m not a fan of him?’ They could be like, ‘I don’t give a s—.’ And then you’re embarrassed because you’re recording it.”
So far, everybody he has visited has been happy to see him … though there was one whose chillness was so strong Brad and Paige wondered for a few minutes if he was going to ever become un-chill. (He did). As he parks at site P38, he sees five men. They all are wearing red T-shirts because they are fans of Wisconsin football and just finished watching Wisconsin beat Brigham Young, 40-6.
He scans their faces for reaction. Grant Fischer is the first to notice the surprise visitor. His face lights up. Then Pat Fischer, Grant’s dad, hears Brad say hello. Fischer has been a Keselowski fan since Keselowski’s first full Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season (2010), so he recognizes Brad’s voice even though he hasn’t seen him yet. He says, “What?” in a tone that suggests, “the heck is he doing here?”
When I do things like this, it makes the bad weekends on the track not feel so empty.
Pat Fischer knows about the visits, but he’s still surprised when one happens at his site. He offers Keselowski a dinner of corn and pork but Keselowski declines. These visits are like trips to Gramma’s house, he says: Everyone wants to stuff him full of food. He’s particular about what he eats on race weekends, so he always says no thanks. That rule, though, does not extend to beer.
Keselowski arrived intending to give out a case of beer. But before he can retrieve the case from his cart, Fischer grabs a beer out of his own cooler and puts it in his favorite driver’s hand. The beer is cold, free and Miller Lite, so of course Keselowski accepts.
After he cracks open the beer Fischer gave him, Keselowski grabs a case of Miller Lite from his golf cart and hands it to Fischer. “You got one of the best trade deals ever,” he says, and they clink their cans together and take swigs.
That moment, as much as any on this night, encapsulates why Keselowski does this: It’s simply two men drinking a cold one together … and it’s much more than that. It’s hard to think of a more memorable interaction for Fischer than giving Keselowski a beer. And for Keselowski, what could be more real than accepting such a gift? “I get to say I got to drink with Brad,” Fischer says a few days later. “I don’t know how many other guys got to drink with their favorite driver.”
Keselowski mentions (or tries to) that he grew up in Michigan and introduces (or tries to) Paige, and Fischer’s delightful reaction is, essentially, “Duh — I’m a fan. I know where you’re from and who your wife is.” Keselowski and Fischer talk about racing, fishing, college football and whether it’s more expensive to raise sons or daughters. This is typical, and it’s what Keselowski wants out of these visits. As fleeting as rushed autographs can be, he believes conversations like this are equally meaningful. He gets at least as much out of them as his fans, if not more.
“Being a race car driver, especially before I got married and had Scarlett, can be a really empty experience, where you’re defined completely by your performance,” he says. “I don’t care how good you are, there are going to be some really bad days in this sport. That’s just the way it is. That’s super, super empty. It’s really tough, not just for me, but for everyone. When I do things like this, it makes the bad weekends on the track not feel so empty.”
Doing more
Keselowski, 33, sees going on these visits, and sharing them on social media, as a way to build his legacy. He has won 24 races and a championship, so his on-track legacy will be reflective of how many of each he has when he retires.
Off the track, he wants to build something lasting and unique, and these visits are the brick and mortar. He wants to be known as “authentic, understood the pulse of the sport, didn’t just come here, collect a paycheck, get the hell out and hide in the motorhome or fly home right away. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still going to fly home. I’m still going to hang out in the motorhome. That’s part of the deal for us. But you can do more than that.”
As the visit is winding down, a man wearing a walking boot and a shirt that looks like Keselowski’s Miller Lite fire suit approaches Keselowski. He is name is Jack Kirkland. His site is next door, and most of the flags that attracted Keselowski in the first place belong to him and not Fischer. It’s just a coincidence that they were next to each other. Kirkland’s site also has a sign out front asking Keselowski to stop. Keselowski never drove by the front of Kirkland’s site so he never saw the sign. Just by luck, Kirkland happened to be walking his dog as Keselowski was getting ready to leave or he would have missed the site visit with his favorite driver.
“I don’t know any other athlete or any other sport where anybody does that. Tom Brady doesn’t come out and interact with the fans. Aaron Judge doesn’t. He’s the only one I know who comes out and spends time with his fans. I think it’s fantastic,” Kirkland says. “He’s scratched and clawed up to where he is, to being one of the superstars in the sport today. It just shows what kind of guy he is that he actually cares about the fans and he’ll take time to do that.”
It’s time to go. Keselowski signs a few more autographs, passes out shirts and hats and die-cast cars and then climbs in the golf cart — still powered up, thankfully — to begin the trip back to his motorcoach. He drives off with roughly the same number of fans he started with — or maybe a few more — but he formed a much deeper connection with several of them. And as those fans watch him go, they can’t believe their luck … and they’re more convinced than ever that they picked the right driver.
A few days later, Fischer jokes that he regrets only one thing about his time with Keselowski. You know how sometimes, five minutes after a conversation ends, you think of a line that would have made everybody laugh? That’s how it is for him. He’s a truck driver who recently started a real estate business. He sounded like a NASCAR driver when he plugged his new line of work while talking with Keselowski on Facebook Live. A bunch of his friends noticed and cracked up about it.
Later on, Fischer wished he had also used the old Ricky Bobby line from Talladega Nights: “I’m not sure what to do with my hands.”