Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)
Friday, June 19, 2020
EVENT: Geico 500 Talladega Media Availability
Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 2 Dent Wizard Ford Mustang, has two wins this season and leads all active NASCAR Cup Series drives with five career triumphs at Talladega Superspeedway. Keselowski held a media availability earlier this afternoon to talk about his success and other topics with members of the media.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Dent Wizard Ford Mustang – YOUR NAME COMES UP AS ONE OF THE BEST SUPERSPEEDWAY DRIVERS IN THE SPORT TODAY. HOW DOES THAT FEEL AND WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS KIND OF RACING? “Talladega is one of those love-hate racetracks. I love it when we win and hate it when we wreck. I think you look at that and it’s been really frustrating for me as of late because it seems like we’ve been in great position and keep getting wrecked. I was re-watching the fall race. Kansas didn’t go well for us in the playoffs, so the fall race probably took me out of a shot to continuing in the playoffs. I was in the high line, drafting with Brendan Gaughan pushed him from 20th and we were taking the lead, I mean literally taking the lead when we wrecked. I was thinking to myself halfway down the backstretch, ‘I’m gonna push Brendan. We’re gonna get into turn three. I’m gonna move high. I’m gonna pass him. I’m gonna take the lead. This race is over.’ And in the two or three seconds I had – the time between then and when we wrecked our entire world changed. The 18, 17 came up and hit us. Brendan was upside-down and I was wrecked out of the race. That just tells you that Talladega is still Talladega. You can make all the right moves, be in the right place and end up in the trash heap. It seems like that’s been worse as of late. I don’t know why that is. Well, I do know why that is, but I don’t agree with why that is, but we’ll just try to survive if you can survive. Certainly, I feel like we have as good a chance as anyone else to win, if not better.”
DO YOU THINK THESE NEW RULES WILL ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO BLOCK MORE IF THE RUNS AREN’T COMING AS FAST OR DO YOU THINK IT DOESN’T MATTER? “I’m not sure what to expect. I think the list of changes was so big that I’m having a hard time anticipating how the cars are gonna drive. Small variations in how the car drives can make a big difference as to how they draft, so it’s gonna be a lot of learning as we go in the race with having the stages and all that I’m sure everyone will adjust quite rapidly, but with respect to that I’m not sure what to expect enough to give it a real articulate answer, but I do know one thing, we don’t have to run over each other and wreck each other. The gas pedal still does have – it’s not digital, it’s not like zero and 100, it’s got all these spots in-between there and some people have figured that out and some people haven’t.”
HOW HAS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH TALLADEGA CHANGED THROUGH THE YEARS? “I don’t think you ever feel comfortable at Talladega. The rules change so much there. I mean, it changes almost every two or three years to where, quite honestly, your techniques and tactics have to completely evolve. If you go back, you look at the plate races even three years ago, it’s completely different. I think you go back and look at the plate races from 20 years ago and, my goodness, those guys wouldn’t even know what they were looking at. I watch some of those races just because I think they’re really cool and fun, and I can’t even comprehend what’s going on because the racing was so much different, and the moves that worked or didn’t work were completely different. You have to keep evolving at Talladega. I don’t know if there’s a track on the circuit where the tactics evolve more rapidly and drastically year over year than Talladega, so you’ve just got to really try to stay on top of that and it’s a hard thing to do. Sometimes you can stay on top of the tactics and it doesn’t matter and you end up getting wrecked anyway, but it certainly is a challenging challenging place.”
THEY SAY YOU CAN’T OVERTHINK TALLADEGA. DO YOU HAVE TO FORCE YOURSELF NOT TO PRE-THINK A PLACE LIKE TALLADEGA EVEN WITH ALL THE CHANGES? “Talladega is a really easy place to psych yourself out. Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right. That’s the Henry Ford saying and it really applies to being a race car driver at Talladega.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK IN THE EARLY PART OF THE RACE CONSIDERING YOU JUST SAID A LOT OF LEARNING IS GOING TO TAKE PLACE ON WHAT YOU CAN AND CAN’T DO? “Yeah, it’s a little bit like learning how to ride a bike without training wheels. You hope everybody is smart and that they take chances, you have to take chances to learn. That’s how you learn, but by the same token you hope they don’t take chances that are potentially lethal to everyone else’s day and causes big wrecks, but I can’t speak for everyone. Everybody has a different approach. It’s one of the great things about life is that we’re all different and on the racetrack it plays out. Everybody has different motivations, challenges, goals and they all kind of get thrown into this big pot at Talladega with no practice. We’ll see what happens.”
SUNDAY WOULD HAVE ORIGINALLY BEEN RACED AT CHICAGOLAND. DO YOU THINK IT’S MISSED THIS SEASON NOT HAVING IT ON THE SCHEDULE? “Yeah, I think it is thought of being one of the better mile-and-a-halves. I’m not exactly sure why that is. I enjoy it a lot. It probably has something to do with the fact it’s so bumpy, and that makes the race spread out in multiple lanes and multiple lanes are good for passing and good for action. Maybe I’m completely wrong, but some tracks, mile-and-a-halves lend themselves to better racing than others, but I think our sport will certainly miss the market. The Chicago market, even though it’s not too close to the city of Chicago, it’s still in the area, hence the Chicagoland term, but it’s hard to quantify. I think everybody is just so head down just trying to get through everything that’s been thrown at us every day and every week. It’s so hard to have any perspective right now. I think that whether it’s virus or protests and that’s happening globally, then we have our own little focus world of at the racetrack and trying to win and trying to overcome no practice, by the way I’ve got to do a health screening every other day, I don’t know where I’m supposed to be, I don’t have any help at the racetrack. It’s a complete mess and we’re all just trying to kind of live through the days, and I don’t know if we’re really thinking about or having the perspective of months and years and the broader context. I think somebody brought up on Twitter about not going to Sonoma. At this time of year we would normally be at Sonoma and that hadn’t even crossed my mind, not even in the faintest. People ask me what day it is and I have no idea what day it is. Somebody told me the other day, on Wednesday, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be racing today?’ I hadn’t checked my calendar and I’m like, ‘Shoot, did I miss something?’ So it’s really hard, I guess what I’m trying to say here is to have any context to a lot of what’s going on, I’m trying, we’re all trying, but when it comes to things like trying to put missing Chicago in perspective it’s like, ‘I’m just trying to make it to Talladega.’ I hesitate to speak for everyone else or pretend that I speak for everyone else that is on the weekly tour here, or bi-weekly tour, whatever this tour is, but I would assume that many of them feel the same way.”
THE 2021 SCHEDULE IS SOMETHING PEOPLE ARE BARELY THINKING ABOUT, BUT NASCAR HAS TO BE ATTUNED TO THAT. THERE’S AN UNCERTAIN SENSE ABOUT CHICAGOLAND’S FUTURE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THAT TRACK BE A PART OF NASCAR’S FUTURE BEYOND THIS YEAR? “Sure. I mean, if it makes sense. They know if it makes sense way more than I do. I don’t have the P&L statement for Chicagoland Speedway sitting in front of me to say, ‘All right, we’ve got to keep doing this or not doing it.’ But I will say I do like the track. I enjoy going there. Is it the end of the world if we can’t run there again? No, but I do enjoy things about that racing area and that track. I think there’s a lot of opportunities that are opening up for us as a sport. I mean, we’re seeing that with Nashville and probably some other sites that I’ve been reading about – Road America and I’m sure more than that. Don’t hold me to just those two, and I think we’re proving to ourselves that we can do more with less by running these midweek races and half the amount of people here at the races that used to be, whether it’s the team side or everything else. We’re proving to ourselves we can do more with less because we have no other choice. Certainly, the ramifications of that are going to be, or should be, long-lasting because there are efficiencies that have been gained and I hope those get applied. I know hope is not a plan, but I don’t get to make the decisions either. I hope that what we’re learning from all this is that weekday races are awesome and that we should roll forward with them next year. They’re showing significant potential for ratings and overall engagement. It’s just a great thing, a tremendous thing and I hope that’s one of the key lessons, but whether it’s different tracks, different venues, different schedules, setups, rosters, I’m all ears. I just want what’s best for this sport and without being able to see all the data to speak to 100 percent knowledge base, I would say that the knowledge base that I do have there are a lot of things I like and one of them is Chicago.”
DO YOU LIKE THE WAY THE LINEUPS ARE BEING SET WITH NO QUALIFYING, NO PRACTICE AND YOU GO TO TALLADEGA KIND OF LIKE THROWNG DARTS, NO? “It hasn’t been as big a deal as I thought it would be. I was nervous starting on the pole for Darlington. I was just gonna go down in the corner in turn one and be like ‘Oh, I forgot how to drive.’ It seems like I have that moment once a year. You sit all off-season and when you sit and you’re just being normal all off-season and you get ready to get in that car at Daytona for that first practice and you pull the belts tight and you put the steering wheel on there’s always that quick moment of like, ‘I hope I remember how to do this because I’m about to go in that corner at 200 miles an hour and I just hope that my brain and hand and feet are all still connected like they were before.’ So far, that’s worked out okay for me. So try to shrug those off as just being those silly insecurities, but they really rear their head when you have no practice and you lead the field into turn one, you just want to make sure you don’t make a fool of yourself. There have been some small issues. You look at weights falling out of a couple cars and I’m sure some setups have been missed where guys just kind of overpredicted certain features, but, for the most part, I think it’s been really, really smooth. I really liked, to that point, when we were running races back-to-back at Darlington and Charlotte, those doubleheaders Sundays and Wednesdays, I really like the idea of taking the top 20 in finishing and inverting them for the next race for starting position. I thought that created some great racing. I understand you can’t do that when you’re going to different tracks, but, so far, I’ve really liked how it’s played out.”
IT WAS MENTIONED EARLIER HOW YOU ARE IN THE CONVERSATION FOR ONE OF THE BEST SUPERSPEEDWAY RACERS OF ALL TIME. WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO WIN A SIXTH CAREER RACE AT TALLADEGA? “Well, without having a Daytona 500 win I think it pretty much kicks me right in between the legs on being able to lay any kind of claim to that, but I’m hopeful we can get that. Winning the Coke 600 was awesome and I don’t want anyone to take this any other way than that, but in some ways it was also like a huge moment of anxiety for me because I know that all I’m missing off kind of the crown jewel resume now is a Daytona 500. I know how close we’ve been and it just makes me want to explode inside. Somebody once told me that if you go to the Olympics and you score a silver medal that’s the worst thing that can ever happen to you. The guys that scores the bronze is thrilled because he got a medal. The guy who won the gold is obviously thrilled because he won it all, but the guy or girl who got the silver, that’s the one who is really frustrated because they medaled, but they were this close to winning the gold. I feel a little bit like a silver medal winner right now on the plate tracks, and I know that not having the Daytona 500 is a huge miss and until you have that I don’t think you can be in those discussions.”
