Friday, Feb. 18, 2011 Dodge Motorsports PR Daytona Int’l Speedway Daytona 500 Brad Keselowski Open Interview NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) AT SOME POINT ON SUNDAY, ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TEAM UP WITH KURT? “I hope so. We’ve worked really well together in both testing and practice here at the 500, but we haven’t seen each other in race trim yet and we’re not going to see each other until the 500. I think that if we can get together in the 500, we’ll be one of the combos to beat.”
WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW’S NATIONWIDE RACE? “I think that there are going to be a lot of incidents. With the bumpers not lining up – they line up a little, but not a lot. What you’re seeing is as the fuel burns out of the cars, they go from lining up to not lining up. If you have a guy in front of you who’s halfway through a fuel run, you’re not going to line up bumpers and you’re going to wreck him. You don’t know those things. It’s just all these idiosyncrasies and it’s going to be a very tough race.”
IT WAS STRANGE THAT ONLY 12 CARS PRACTICED TODAY; “I didn’t expect as many cars to be on the track as there has been so far. I think if you look back, traditionally at Talladega the way that practice works there, you get the big packs for the first hour and the second practice is single car runs. Quite honestly, if it wasn’t for the rule changes, I think there would be less practice than what we’ve seen. It’s part of the deal. You get a few laps on your motor…gears, tires and all that good stuff to make sure everything is good and get ready for the big race.”
WAS IT MORE TO SAVE ENGINES OF THE CAR? “The engine is your car. There’s also the car itself, the body. Obviously there’s suspension components, but mostly the engines and the actual body on the car.”
PEOPLE REALLY JUMPED ON BOARD WITH THE UNDERDOG STORY YESTERDAY WITH YOUR BROTHER? “It’s great to have fans. Fans continue to amaze me with the way that they pour in support. We’re really thankful for that. I didn’t actually do it to make more fans, I did it because it was the right thing and it felt good to work with him and get to the front.”
DID YOU GET A LOT OF E-MAILS FROM FANS? “Oh yeah, it blew up on Twitter. My inbox was full and it took me like 15 refreshes to get to all of them. That was pretty cool. It’s amazing how people respond to things like that.”
HAVE YOU HAD A CHANCE TO TALK TO YOUR BROTHER SINCE? “I haven’t. I’ve had appearances to do and I’m here for the PVA.org announcement. I’ve got one more thing to do. I haven’t made it into the garage yet. I’ve text messaged a couple of times and that’s as far as we’ve gotten.”
HOW DID YOUR BROTHER GET TO BE SO HEFTY AND YOU SO SLIM (LAUGHTER)? “He was the first one to the table.”
ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH THE TERM ‘SNOT-NOSED KID’? No (laughter)…it really doesn’t matter. I’m comfortable with the term Brian Keselowski, Daytona 500 starter.”
