"We made our way here to Raleigh (North Carolina), met with the governor and some fans here won some contests and we’re here with Miss Sprint Cup," said Keselowski, a Michigan native and North Carolina resident. "Trying to showcase, obviously, a huge race for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase in Charlotte. It’s an important race, for sure, being where it’s at in the (Chase Grid), so just having a little fun with it."
On the outset, it may appear that the Chase’s No. 1 seed and only four-time 2014 winner may have gotten the short end of the stick — seeing as some of the other drivers ended up in major markets like Chicago, Phoenix, San Antonio, Boston and Miami and didn’t just take a ride up I-85 for a few hours. Heck, even Kevin Harvick got to hit up the ESPN studios for the day, so why the seeming lack of respect for Keselowski?
Well, there’s more to it.
He spent the day in North Carolina touting the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, one of the Chase’s flagship events — a race that he won last year as a non-Chase driver, when a victory was needed most to set himself up for a roaring 2014. But even if he did feel slighted in the least, it’s a feeling he’s gotten used to as NASCAR’s unheralded misfit champion.
In an exceedingly heartfelt and well-written post on his website BradRacing.com on Tuesday, Keselowski addressed just this.
"Each time I made some progress, I figured, ‘Heck, I’ve made it this far. Might as well keep going.’
The funny thing is this: even though I was having success, a lot of the time, I didn’t feel like I belonged. I felt like an outsider.
I’m sure part of it was in my head. Part of it was probably where I’d come from, literally 700-plus miles from the heart of NASCAR. Still, I couldn’t help feeling like one of the Bad News Bears a lot of the time, unable to find a place to fit in. In 2009, when Hendrick Motorsports decided to keep Mark Martin as a driver and I lost my Cup ride, there was a logical reason for it, but it still hurt.
Later, as I had more and more success, it still seemed like I constantly had to prove myself. It probably sounds crazy, but even after we won the Cup championship in 2012, I felt like we didn’t get credit for it a lot of the time. It baffled me. In two years, we had taken a 35th place Cup team and transformed it into a champion. But there was always someone ready to say, “You only won because of pit strategy,” or a bunch of other things that basically meant, “You didn’t deserve to win. It was a fluke.”
There are two ways to quiet those types of people. The first is to ignore them, which is certainly a virtue, but not one I’m particularly good at practicing.
The other is to win another championship."
And here we are with Keselowski back in championship form, 10 weeks removed from finding out if he has what it takes to prove his doubters wrong; to prove that he has what it takes to hoist that trophy over his head again and move his name from a list of one-time champions like Alan Kulwicki, Kurt Busch and Bobby Labonte to the more sacred group of two-timers that consists of five NASCAR Hall of Famers (Herb Thomas, Tim Flock, Buck Baker, Joe Weatherly and Ned Jarrett) and one likely eventual Hall of Famer in Terry Labonte.
All that stands in his way now are the 15 drivers competing for the same prize over the next 10 races, five of which play right into his wheelhouse as 1.5-mile tracks.
"I think the mile-and-a-halves are going to be critical to winning a championship, for sure," said Keselowski, who holds two wins at intermediate tracks this year. "It’s hard to say which one other than Homestead, which is obvious. We’re trying to aim towards Texas and Charlotte being very critical as well with where they fit in the schedule. Similar tire compounds, similar demands out of the car in those three races. If you can run up front and win there, you’ve got a shot at winning the whole thing when it comes time to go to Homestead."
Photo credit: CMS/HHP Photo
With the new Chase format introduced in 2014 that consists of three rounds of three races in which four drivers are eliminated after each, leaving the remaining four to battle it out at Homestead-Miami Speedway, it almost forces teams and drivers to look ahead to which tracks and races could be strong points, as the Team Penske driver and crew chief Paul Wolfe clearly already have.
Conversely, the concerns about weaker or more unpredictable tracks also set in earlier than usual for drivers, and Keselowski is no exception.
"I think you have to worry about Talladega. No doubt about that," he said. "You just don’t control your own destiny there. To some extent Kansas has been that way the last few years as well, so those could be the two tougher races."
It brings to mind, though, how much the landscape of the sport has changed overall just since a 28-year-old Keselowski, in just his third full-time season, managed to wrestle away the attention from what easily could have been (at the time) Johnson’s sixth championship had a few cards fallen differently. Not only that, but the changes we’ve seen in Keselowski as a driver and as a person — they’re dramatic.
After reading his blog and speaking with him Wednesday, it’s abundantly clear that this man’s goals, perspective and confidence in himself and those around him have transformed exponentially over the course of the past two years.
He doesn’t just want to win. He wants to lead by example.
"I think we’re stronger than we’ve ever been," he said. "Obviously we have another win in the Chase, which is more than what we had in 2012 and a confidence booster. We have secure footing with a manufacturer in Ford, who’s committed long term and we have a team that just has more experience. I think in a lot of ways we’re more secure across the board.
"I think in order to be effective as a leader of the sport, you have to be successful in some fashion. We’ve accomplished one championship with the Cup side and one on the Nationwide side. I feel like we’re capable of a lot more and I’m certainly up for that challenge. But Iike I said in (my blog), I want to be a part of helping the sport grow and the leadership base that’s required for that across the board and it’s my hope that that’ll happen if I can win a championship across the board, (in all three series)."
Don’t be so quick to think of Keselowski as a toned down version of his former self, though. While he’s certainly growing up, he hasn’t forgotten the art of celebrating with grandeur.
"If we won all three, we’d probably have to go out of the country."
With perhaps the best odds of anyone to accomplish the feat across the Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck Series (as an owner) this year, it’s looking like he could get that exotic foreign trip he missed out on Wednesday, after all.
The journey starts Sunday at Chicagoland (2 p.m. ET, ESPN).
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