[media-credit name=”kansasspeedway.com” align=”alignright” width=”158″]
[/media-credit]Friday, April 20, 2012
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series – STP 400 – Kansas Speedway
Brad Keselowski Open Interview – Dodge PR
Brad Keselowski (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger R/T) CAN YOU GIVE US AN UPDATE ON YOUR CAR’S FUEL PICK UP ISSUES? IS IT FUEL INJECTION? “It’s that system. Yeah, we’ve obviously have had troubles. That’s not good. We’re working on it. The only way to know if you have the answer or not is when you get to the end of the race…is it running or not running? I would say at Texas that we did not have the answers. We can do all the testing that we want. Sometimes we found something, sometimes we don’t. Obviously at the end of the day we didn’t have it right at Texas.”
IS IT MECHANICAL, PARTS AND PIECES? “I think so. Obviously it’s mechanical because (it) stops running. It’s not a simple process to get it back going, it requires changing parts. I’m assuming that’s the case based upon the changes to make it right after it fails.”
WHEN WAS THE MOMENT THE MOMENT LAST YEAR THAT YOU REALIZED THAT YOU COULD WIN: DARLINGTON, CHARLOTTE OR WHEN YOU WON HERE AT KANSAS? “I would say it took all the way to Pocono (August race). I felt that we were going in the right direction. We made changes before that that I felt good about. I’m the type of guy that wants to see it, not just believe it. I want to see it. Pocono kind of gave me personally that belief.
“I believe that I can win every week. You have to be a good racecar driver. It’s just a matter of what your odds are and I would have put my odds at ‘not very good’. I would put my odds a lot higher this year than last spring when we came here to Kansas.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT UPCOMING REPAVE AT KANSAS SPEEDWAY? IT ALMOST FEELS LIKE A DEATH IN THE FAMILY. “I don’t know if it’s that extreme. I was running and thinking about it, for sure, when I was out there on the racetrack. I’ve got a really good feel for what I want out of my car at this track and I’m really happy about it and really sad to see it go. It’s so hard to get that feel. Some racetracks that we go to your whole career and you never know what you need to run well. Here is one of those tracks that I knew from Day 1 what I needed to run well with. It’s a shame to lose that because you don’t always get that very easy. But there are other places like Phoenix that I didn’t get the ‘old’ Phoenix. I feel like I’m a lot more competitive at the ‘new’ Phoenix and I’m sure there’s other drivers saying the same thing or feeling the same way that I do about seeing Kansas change. In the end it’s fair for everyone. It’s the right thing to do. We have to make sure that we don’t have a track that falls apart in the middle of the race so I can understand that the logic behind it. That’s racing.”
CAN THE REPAVE RUIN THE KIND OF RACING WE HAVE HERE? “I think it can. It has the potential. I think it’s a bad mindset to say that a repave is going to kill the racing. I don’t agree with that. I think it has the potential if it’s not done right. Basically you’re re-doing something. Anytime that you re-do something you have the potential to screw it up, like doing your hair in the morning. You do it the first time and do it right and you re-do it and you have the potential to screw it up. It’s not different with the racetrack. And the potential is here to screw it up and the potential of the next track when they repave it. So it depends what process they use. I spoke very highly of Michigan out there at the tire test because they used a different process that a lot of these tracks have (used) on a repave over the last half-decade. I think that race (Michigan) is going to be much more competitive than any of the other races from tracks that have come right off of a repave. So I think we’re all interested in seeing if they use some of those same processes here at Kansas and then it has the potential to come back and not jut be an equal race, but even better. Will that happen? Who knows? We won’t know until we come back and race. There’s always that potential. The key thing is to approach it the right way. It’s an opportunity to not have a definite, negative effect.”
JEFF GORDON SAID TODAY THAT HE UNDERSTANDS THE REASONS THAT HE’S BEEN GIVEN WHY THERE WILL BE A REPAVE, BUT HE STILL DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHY THEIR GOING TO REPAVE THE TRACK. IS IT WORTH THE TRADEOFF? “I think you should ask Jeff if he thought it was worth the risk at Martinsville that year when that chunk came through and cost him the race. I think then he would answer it a little bit differently.”
SO YOU DON’T HAVE ANY REASON TO JUSTIFY NOT REPAVING THE TRACK? “The risk is that you have another incident like Daytona or Martinsville years back with Jeff. I don’t think that it’s worth it. That’s my opinion. Certainly there are other opinions out there.”
THERE HAVE BEEN ABOUT 20 FEWER CAUTIONS THIS YEAR. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHY? IS IT BECAUSE GUYS RUNNING NICER? ARE GUYS GETTING STRUNG OUT? “Aerodynamics are taking over the sport and we can’t get close enough to each other to wreck each other. That’s the reality of it. When you can’t get close to someone because aerodynamic effects of the cars, the potential to wreck is a lot less no matter what the situation. It doesn’t matter if you’re angry or not angry, you can’t get (there) to do anything. I think the aerodynamics of the cars have ramped up over the last two or three years as the sport’s evolved.”
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO GET MORE CONSISTENT RESULTS? “I think we’ve had consistency in speed, we just haven’t had consistency in finishes. I’ve had three bad finishes, two of them were for parts and the third one was getting caught up in the big one at Daytona. I’m not concerned about anything other than the failures and the rest will work itself out. I told Matt Kenseth this the other day…I feel like I’ve race side-by-side with Matt in every race this year and if we simply wouldn’t have had those two gremlins at Vegas and Texas, I feel like we’d be second or third in points. I don’t feel bad about our efforts. We just have to get rid of those gremlins. We’re a team that has the ability to win races and run for a championship.”
