Friday, Nov. 4, 2011
Texas Motor Speedway
Dodge Motorsports PR
AAA Texas 500
Brad Keselowski Open Interview
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
BRAD KESELOWSKI (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) HOW’S YOUR CAR? “I was a little nervous about our qualifying effort so we spent a lot of time on it today with the Miller Lite Dodge Charger and had a decent turnout in qualifying. I feel like the Roush cars were very, very fast in qualifying trim. They’ve got a great package for that. Hopefully, the race plays out that our car will come to us. I think that we have very good long-run cars and I’m excited to see how the race plays out.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE JAWING BETWEEN THE 14 AND THE 99? “I’m on the page of Jimmie Johnson. They keep jawing and just let us right back in it. That would be great.”
ARE YOU STILL BURNED AT LAST WEEK’S FINISH AT MARTINSVILLE? “Yes and no. There’s not a lot that I felt that we could do differently. We had a great race. It’s very frustrating to know that we did all the right things and weren’t rewarded. It’s got to come around. We’ve had great cars throughout this whole Chase. We might not be the fastest cars every week, but we’ve done a great job and I feel like we deserve to be either first or second in the points. If it wasn’t for the piece of rubber flying up underneath the car at Dover or the late incident at Martinsville, we’d be there. It’s just circumstances out of our control that has put us to third, not our own efforts. You know what, I’m OK with that. That’s just the breaks sometimes. I’m just really proud of the team to have cars and the effort to get that done.”
DID YOU SEE ANY PART OF THE WRECK? “I didn’t see it, but I knew that it was coming. I was hoping that I could get in front of it before it happened.”
WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT THE CAUTION DIDN’T COME OUT AFTER YOU SPUN? “No. Hell no. I don’t think the yellow should have come out for that. I would have been disappointed if I was NASCAR or if I was another driver and they threw another yellow for that. I kind of stick up for NASCAR for that. The only thing that I was disappointed with is that the 83 car didn’t get parked about 250 laps before that because the sequence of events that he started with his retaliation, or attempts at it, is what caused our problems. That was not fair to my team or the fans or even Jimmie Johnson who should have won the race.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOUR APPROACH CHANGED AT THAT POINT? WOULD YOU APPROACH THIS ANY DIFFERENTLY IF YOUR WERE ONLY 12 POINTS OUT OF THE LEAD? “Nope, not at all. I’m not approaching the weekend any differently. I don’t think anyone on my team is. You can get desperate and do desperate things; I think that would be a disservice to our team. I think that it would be a disservice to the efforts that we’ve put in. I’m just banking on guys like Carl (Edwards) that have made a lot of deposits out of the luck bank and eventually it’s got to come back to him. And when it does, we’ll be there and we’ll be ready.”
