Ford Performance NSCS Notes & Quotes:
2015 Daytona 500 Media Day
Thursday, February 12, 2015
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – TALK ABOUT YOUR LEARNING CURVE AS A DRIVER FROM WHERE IT STARTED TO NOW. WAS IT A STEADY PROGRESSION? “I know I had a lot to learn and am still learning. I think that is a key to life, to never feel like you are done learning. I would say I probably had a year where I didn’t learn much in 2010 and then in 2011 and 2012 I learned a lot. I don’t know if it is always steady. It kind of goes up and down at different rates but I would say one of the keys to my success is constant growth.”
HAS IT ALWAYS BEEN ON YOU OR DO YOU SEEK OTHERS OUT? “I am not afraid to ask others for help but at the end of the day it is on me to figure it out.”
THIS CROP OF YOUNG GUYS COMING IN, DO THEY HAVE IT DIFFERENT THAN HOW YOU CAME IN? “Every driver has his own story so it really isn’t fair to say if anyone is like me or not like me. You would assume they are not like you. I think each generation is different too. There is a little bit of infusion of new drivers and new talent but it is relatively small. At least those that have been successful and winning races and starting up front and doing the things we attribute to success. Of them I think Kyle Larson comes to mind and Austin Dillion and certainly I am a lot different than they were. I guess it kind of answers itself.”
WHAT IS YOUR BEST ADVICE FOR ANY YOUNG GUY? “Learn to golf. It pays a lot better.”
CAN YOU DEFINE WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE STRAPPING IN FOR THE DAYTONA 500? “I try really hard to make it not feel like a big deal. I try really hard when I am getting in the car before the start of the race to make it feel like just another day. I think it helps put you in a mental spot where you can make the best decisions which aren’t when you are full of adrenaline and hyped up. For me, on a good day, it just feels like another day.”
DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU STRAPPED IN FOR THE 500? “Yeah, it was 2010 and I remember all the people on pit road and in the grandstands and thinking to myself that I was finally getting to do this and it was really cool.”
WAS YOUR HEART BEATING HARD? “A little bit the first few laps. Then I blew a tires out on lap four and that wasn’t fun.”
CONGRATULATIONS ON THE BABY NEWS. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE? “That is really not fair for me to talk about it being a life changing experience until it happens.”
WELL, YOU KNOW IT IS COMING. FROM THE MINUTE YOU FIND OUT IT CHANGES YOUR LIFE. “Yeah. I don’t feel like it has changed that much with me to date. I am excited and prepared for it. I feel really good about it but I can’t say it has really been life changing to date. I expect it to be life changing once the baby is born. I grew up in a family where I am the youngest of five. I have three older sisters and I have been an uncle many times over and experienced it form that point of view. I am sure it will be different when it is your own child. I have a pretty good grasp for how it works and I think it is going to be good.”
WHAT HAS THE RESPONSE BEEN LIKE FROM YOUR PEERS? “The overall response has been very positive. I got messages from people I never thought I would get messages from. Guys like Jamie McMurray that meant something to me.”
IS IT GOING TO CUT INTO YOUR VIDEO GAME TIME? “Yeah. We are working on that. I can stay up all night so I think I will have the night time schedule. I always run better at night races.”
WE’VE HEARD FROM DRIVERS THAT BEING A FATHER HAS HAD A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE ON THEIR CAREER. IS THAT SOMETHING YOU’VE TALKED WITH GUYS ABOUT? “No, not really. I talked to my dad about it. He was very complimentary about how he felt like it affected him, which was good. I can’t say I have talked to a lot of other drivers about it, no.”
DO YOU THINK IT WILL HAVE AN AFFECT? “I think I would be remiss to say it will have zero affect. Is it going to make me pull a different move on the race track? Probably not. Is it going to affect my patience and outlook on topics off the track? Certainly. I think that is reasonable to assume.”
“I have noticed there are a lot of Barbie vans in the MRO lot. I am sure I will have a Barbie van too.”
“I haven’t put that much thought into this topic outside of looking out for the baby’s well-being and Paige. I love to take care of her. I haven’t thought of the social ramifications outside of that.”
BIG PLANS FOR VALENTINES DAY? “Yeah, I do.”
BIRTHDAY PLANS? “Hanging with you. I have an appearance to go to and I will sign some autographs that is about it.”
WHAT RACE IS THE BABY DUE? “All-Star race weekend.”
WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT ALL THE RULES CHANGES AND SUCH, THIS DAYTONA 500 IS STILL JUST ABOUT LINING UP AND GETTING LUCKY ENOUGH TO WIN RIGHT? “On every race weekend things have to fall the right way to win. It always has taken a fast car and great execution and a little bit of luck to win. Week to week depending on the many variable that affect a race it seems like those percentages shift and when we come to the plate tracks, certainly the luck percentage is higher than at other tracks. I don’t think it is fair to say the other two categories cease to exist just because you are at a plate track. You still have to have a fast car and have to execute. For me, the execution side of that means everything from the guys on pit road to the driver making the right moves but some races I am sad to say just don’t seem like they are winnable. You can be leading and get caught in a lap cars wreck or come to pit road and get trapped by the yellow and that is part of the deal, part of the game. There is a luck factor. It is a little higher at Daytona and Talladega but at the end of the day more times than not, the guy that deserves to win, wins.”
“I would say early on there will be some people, hopefully I am not one of them, who get caught. Probably more specifically to driving through three pit boxes which has kind of been a bit of an epidemic the last year or two when it hasn’t been enforced. It will be nice to see it enforced since it is a bit of a safety matter. I would expect some people will be held honest on that. Maybe I will be one of them. I hope not. I will try really hard not to be. That will be part of the game.”
WE’VE SEEN DANICA, RICKY AND TONY EXPRESS RESERVATIONS OF THE QUALIFYING FORMAT FOR THE 500. WHERE DO YOU STAND ON THAT? “I didn’t put a lot of thought into it. I think there are probably more pressing issues in the sport that deserve attention than that. To spend a lot of time thinking about it is to kind of ignore them. I am not the biggest fan of it but nobody asked me when they were making that decision. At the end of the day as a competitor you like to see success be quantified by the talent of the team or the driver. You accept to some extent that luck is a factor. When those ratios or percentages as I was discussing earlier get out of balance, we all kind of look in the mirror and ask ourselves what we are doing here. That qualifying format itself lends itself to more of a luck percentage than I think we really appreciate as drivers.”
IS IT MORE OUT OF BALANCE BECAUSE WHAT YOU ARE DOING HERE IS JUST LOCKING IN THE TOP TWO CARS? “I think it is more out of balance because of pockets of air, drivers that stop in front of you for not apparent reason other than to mess your lap up. It is so random. It is what it is.”
IS THERE A WAY TO BALANCE THAT OR CHANGE IT OR WHAT? “I think there is a system that fixes it and it is called the Duels. Unfortunately the Duels aren’t used to determine the front row. It is what it is.”
AREN’T THEY LOOKING AT THAT THOUGH? LOOKING AT POLICING THE MONKEYING AROUND THAT HAPPENS IN QUALIFYING? “I haven’t seen the release so I can’t speak on it. I was told last year that there was going to be a review of it so that is all I can offer.”
“Sometimes things come together and sometimes things fall apart that you just can’t explain. Kevin’s team did a good job and so did Kevin of putting it all together last year. My team did that in 2012. That is not something to take for granted, that is for sure.”
A COUPLE YEARS AGO YOU SAID YOU WERE A B+ DRIVER WITH A POTENTIAL. WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE NOW? “I feel like I am a top-three driver in the Sprint Cup Series. I feel really good about my position week to week based on whether it is the track or rules changes I feel like I can be either the best driver or all the way back to a tenth place driver.”
IF YOU ARE THIRD, WHO ARE ONE AND TWO? “I personally think just from watching, and I am not afraid to say it, that Carl Edwards is the best driver in Sprint Cup. That is my personal opinion. It doesn’t make it law or fact but I think to go with that you could probably place an argument for Kevin as the second best. It is a bit subjective.”
KEVIN MAKES SENSE BUT WHAT ABOUT CARL? “I have seen what Carl has done in cars that didn’t have the speed. He has a very diverse skill set. He has been able to win at tracks like Sonoma and has won at every type of track and I feel like he does the best job of any driver I have seen out there at taking a car that is not fast and finding speed out of it. I think when the times have come that he has had dominant cars he has showed dominant performances which is what you have to do. He has kind of shown to me, the skill set at every level to be a top driver.”
DO YOU AND HE GET ALONG WELL? “I think reasonably, yeah.”
DO YOU EXPECT HIM TO BE A CONTENDER IN THE GIBBS CAR? “I do. It would not surprise me if they were the team to beat this year. There is something about those new teams. Magic comes together.”
DO YOU WISH YOU HAD BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH SOME OF THE DRIVERS? “You always wish you had better relationships. Whether you are Jimmie Johnson or anyone you always want to have the best relationship you can have but the question is at what expense. I bet you probably want to drive a Ferrari around but you don’t want a $10,000 car payment each month. For me, whenever the car payment is high and in the sense of car payment for me that means having to give something up for my own performance, I am not that interested in driving a Ferrari.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK DRIVERS WANT TO SEE MOVING FORWARD FROM NASCAR? IS IT MORE INPUT? MORE SAFETY? IS THERE ONE COMMON THEME WHEN YOU TALK TO YOUR FELLOW DRIVERS? “No, if you polled every driver I think they would tell you they all want to be better or different in some other way within the sport. I don’t think there are any common themes at all.”
WHEN YOU SAY YOU ARE A TOP-THREE DRIVER, IS THAT COMPLETELY RESULTS DRIVER OR ARE THERE INTANGIBLES? “There are a lot of intangibles. The results are strong but there are a lot of intangibles as well. So yes on both counts. I feel that we spend a lot of time in this sport looking at stats and stats are good. I don’t want to go all Charles Barkley on stats but they only tell part of the story. There is much more to this sport than the stat book. It is not bad to go off of.”
HOW MUCH DO YOU TRUST THE ANALYTICS THEN? “Some analytics are better than others. I think it depends. The NASCAR loop data is a little, perhaps, less on my radar than some other things. I think there are some things that are not measured that are much more important than a lot of things that are measured. Without getting into anything proprietary, that is where I draw those conclusions off of.”
YOU SAID IN THE PAST YOU WERE FINE WITH BEING NASCAR’S BAD BOY. DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE? ARE YOU STILL FIND WITH IT? “I don’t know if I feel like I am anything. I haven’t spent a lot of time worrying about brands or whatever. I have put a lot of thought into winning and I have put a lot of thought into why I am here and why I am still racing. When I wake up in the morning I feel good about why I am here. At the end of the day I don’t race for a brand, I enjoy the living I make off of the sport and I am very fortunate that I make a very healthy living but I am not here to be a brand, even if I don’t have a choice in the matter. I am here to win races and to be able to look myself in the mirror and know that when I woke up this morning that being a race car driver pushed me to another level as a person and a professional whether that is in work ethic or mental focus or far beyond that. Maybe some other category, whether it is physical fitness or what not. Racing pushes me to another level that nothing else in my life does or ever has. Specifically racing to win pushes me to that level. In that case, what I have said earlier about it doesn’t bother me about being labeled a bad boy or not being having any label at all, what would concern me more than anything is to be a part of this sport only to collect a paycheck or to try to make everyone else happy and in that same light know that I didn’t give it my all. I know that when I have had whatever run ins I have had throughout my career, I have had them because I have done the things that I feel like I need to do to be the best and that is why I am in this sport. That is what drivers me.”
ON THE TOPIC OF BRANDING. IS THAT A SHIFT FROM WHERE YOU WERE LAST YEAR? “I still want to take NASCAR to different places, absolutely, but I view that as my role as an ambassador of the sport, especially as a champion but it does not come before my desire to be a winner. If those different endeavors came at the expense, whether I realized it or not, of being a winner or champion I would get rid of them right away. I kind of look at them as candy or my way of giving back to the sport or paying it forward for the opportunities I have been provided. They are completely exclusive in my mind to my desire to win races and be a champion.”
SO THAT ISN’T BRANDING … “It is branding but not because I am looking for branding. It is me being able to look myself in the mirror or look at other drivers, future drivers, and say I did what I could to grow the sport. Not for my own well-being but for the sport.”
IS IT FRUSTRATING TO NOT BE ABLE TO ESCAPE THE BRAND? “I think it is more frustrating to me when people come to conclusions that aren’t based on fact.”
“It bothered me at the end of last year, not necessarily the run ins I had with Jeff or any of that other stuff but what bothered me the most were people that felt I cost Jeff a championship last year because I didn’t feel that way at all. I felt like those were people that got caught up in the rhetoric and were just trying to use a line to get readers or clicks or viewers or whatever it is. That bothered me a little bit. I didn’t lose sleep over it though.”
JEFF SAID HE RECEIVED A LOT OF MESSAGES FROM DRIVERS SINCE ANNOUNCING HIS RETIREMENT. ARE YOU AMONG THAT GROUP? “Yeah, I sent him a message a few weeks ago. He never responded though. I don’t remember what it was verbatim.”
AS AN OWNER IN THE TRUCK SERIES, WHAT IS YOUR ROLE IN GROOMING DRIVERS TO TAKE OVER WHEN OTHERS RETIRE? “Well, I believe in paying it forward. This sport takes a huge investment from major corporations, whether sponsors or private entities and that gets seen as the lifeblood of the sport and it is in a lot of ways. But a lot of the lifeblood of the sport that doesn’t really get talked about relies in kind of that reinvestment of those that have benefited greatly off of it because they have such powerful recognition and brands whether they want to or not. Whether that is Richard Petty or anyone really in the Hall of Fame or the current driver core. I take that responsibility very personally. It isn’t the sole reason I am in the Truck Series but it is a large reason for it. I feel like for me, I would not be here if it was not for someone that took a chance on me. There were a lot of people that took a chance, most notable is Dale Jr., but there were more than that including Roger Penske. It is my responsibility, at least in my own eyes, to give that same opportunity back. I view it as this giant fruit tree. If you keep walking up to the fruit tree and eat all the fruit, eventually the tree dies and there is nothing left to eat. At some point you have to plant a few of the seeds from the apples and continue the growth of the sport and you owe that to whoever planted the first tree that you ate off of. That is more of a vision on life than maybe anything else but it connects to how I feel about my role in the sport.”
DO YOU FEEL THAT EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE A CHAMPIONSHIP AND BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL THAT YOU STILL AREN’T ACCEPTED IN THE SPORT? “Yeah, I know exactly where that is coming from. Some days I feel that way but I am not a very patient man and in this instance I am. I feel like the sport is coming to me.”
Marry the girl idiot, give the baby a name!