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Talking shop Tuesday in the shadow of the NASCAR Hall of Fame's Glory Road, Brad Keselowski only had to look around to find a source of major motivation for his second NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title.
"We're in the NASCAR Hall of Fame," said Keselowski, the 2012 premier series champ. "Title number two gives you this."
With a seat among stock-car royalty and the Hall's coveted blue blazer among the incentives, Keselowski's quest comes down to its final four races once the Eliminator Round kicks off with Sunday's Goody's Headache Relief Shot 500 (1:15 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM) at Martinsville Speedway. Should he land among the championship quartet and convert in the season's final race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, enshrinement would be all but certain. Every Hall-eligible driver with multiple premier-series titles has been voted for induction.
"That comes with a whole other connotation to your name, your career, your life," Keselowski said as he held court in the facility's Great Hall. "I feel like that's something that's really attractive to me, but, beyond that, it's important for me in anything I do in life to make the most of my opportunities and I have a great opportunity right now with Team Penske and I want to make the most of it."
Keselowski was buoyant Tuesday, thankful to escape the uncertainty of last weekend's trip to Talladega with his title dreams intact. The 31-year-old driver gave a playful photo-bomb to Penske teammate Joey Logano, grinning for the cameras with a skip-step strut as he arrived for media rotations.
Though he may not carry the same sort of momentum as Logano, winner of the last three Sprint Cup races, Keselowski has found new life and comfort in the round-by-round points reset, which has placed the remaining eight-driver field on equal points footing heading to Martinsville.
"It's very rejuvenating. I feel very refreshed," Keselowski said. "Have we had the season we want to date? No, we haven't won as many races as we'd like to have won, but it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. It matters what we can do from here on out. Last year we won the most races throughout the year, but at this point specifically we'd won the most races of anyone and we went to Martinsville and had a parts failure and we were sitting last in the points. It doesn't matter what you've done to date. It matters what you do from here."
From here, Keselowski aims to go one segment further than last season, when he was eliminated before the championship finale. Though he hasn't visited Victory Lane in the Sprint Cup Series at any of the round's three tracks -- Martinsville, Texas and Phoenix -- Keselowski said he still views this three-race series as his team's "best bracket yet."
"I feel the opportunity," Keselowski said. "I feel like we're going to at least two great tracks for us and if we can find a little more speed at Texas, three great tracks for us. I feel like we're really in the driver's seat in a lot of ways."