Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
NASCAR Media Zoom | Thursday, September 23, 2021
Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 2 Autotrader Ford Mustang, is one of four Ford drivers still alive in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, which continues this weekend with the first race in the Round of 12. Keselowski spoke about what lies ahead as part of a NASCAR Zoom call this afternoon.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 2 Autotrader Ford Mustang — HOW ARE YOU SET FOR SPONSORSHIP NEXT SEASON AT ROUSH? “We’re having amazing conversations. The market is incredibly strong — in kind of the decision phase on some really great partners that are new to the sport, so I am thrilled with where we’re at. I don’t have anything to announce today, obviously. I think I would look for us to make one consolidated announcement with respect to our sponsors and our brand initiatives and team lineup all at one time after the season is over, so I’m really excited about it. I think conceptually there’s been a lot of energy around the sport on the partner side and we’re riding a wave of momentum. I’m sorry I can’t give any specifics, but as a general topic things are looking pretty good. I wouldn’t say we have everything done yet by any means today, but a lot of good movement.”
HOW WILL THE NEW PACKAGE IMPACT HOW THE CARS RACE AT TALLADEGA, IF AT ALL? “That’s a good question. I think there’s some thoughts that we’ll see some tandem racing. I’m not totally caught up on that yet. Overall, I thought the racing was pretty good at Daytona. It was a little bit less of a crashfest for most of the race than most people thought it would be, so that’s good. Ultimately, I don’t expect a big difference though.”
HOW IS YOUR CONFIDENCE LEVEL KNOWING VEGAS HAS BEEN A GOOD TRACK FOR YOU IN THE PAST? “Las Vegas has been incredible for us. We had a great run going there last fall and got shuffled on a restart and didn’t get that top 10, but, other than that, we’ve been a solid contender year in and year out. I think we finished second there in the spring and seem to be able to get it done there, so hoping for big things. Obviously, we need a strong performance for this round and the races in it. This is a tough round and I think we’ll have a great shot at doing just that.”
WHAT DO YOU TAKE AWAY FROM YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH ROGER AND TEAM PENSKE? “It’s been a hell of a ride. It’s made me a better race car driver and a better person, and I’m incredibly proud of that. I’m incredibly proud of the things we’ve done, the people we’ve met, the experiences that have come with it. Knowing and working with Roger Penske has, like I said, made me a better person in a lot of ways and a lot of the people around there are just tremendous people as well at Team Penske. I’m certainly gonna miss working with a lot of them and it’s bittersweet. Obviously, I’m very much looking forward to new opportunities that are in front of me, otherwise I wouldn’t have left, but, on the other side, just really proud of what we’ve done together and sad to see that piece come to an end.”
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO PEOPLE WHO THINK THE HIGH DOWNFORCE PACKAGE PUTS LESS EMPHASIS ON DRIVER SKILL AND MORE ON RANDOM LUCK? “I don’t know that random luck is the right word for it, but there’s less car control and the racing is a little more procedural based undoubtedly, so I guess there’s always transitions. These cars from 10 years ago were just freaking animals. Man, were they hard to drive. A number of drivers loved that. That said, you could still get a car that was faster and be a lesser driver and win the race. There’s no doubt about that, so I struggle to say that talent doesn’t still matter it’s just the racing continues to get more and more procedural based, like I said, and that still requires some talent.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE FIRST ROUND OF THE PLAYOFFS AND WHAT’S YOUR EVALUATION OF THE TEAM GOING INTO THIS NEXT ROUND? “I’m proud of the results we had at Bristol. It’s the best run we’ve had in roughly a month, which was sorely needed. If we can show that kind of speed, we have the opportunity to go deep in the playoffs and have a shot at the championship. I can’t answer whether that’s gonna be the case over the next few weeks. I don’t really control enough of those cards. Most of those are car based, but I can say that my pit crew is performing at a super high level, one of the strongest teams I’ve ever had on pit road. If we have the speed and the execution on the driver side to match the pit crew, we can go and win the championship. Right now, the speed has been our weakness to be quite frank, and that kind of stuff comes and goes and that’s why I hesitate to put expectations on anything because obviously as a driver I have some control of the speed quotient, but the reality is when you get to the Cup level most of the drivers are very close with respect to the ability of how fast they can make a car go on its own accord. Ultimately, we’ll see what we’ve got.”
HOW MUCH INTERACTION DO YOU HAVE WITH THE ROUSH GROUP ON A WEEKLY BASIS, ESPECIALLY SINCE YOU’RE STILL RACING FOR A CHAMPIONSHIP WITH PENSKE? “The interesting thing about our sport is we’re one of the few sports, somebody was telling me this the other day that cycling is this way, but we’re one of the few sports where you can be contracted with another team while competing with the team you’re with, which certainly is an interesting situation. You think of football, hockey, baseball, basketball, you’re either with one team or you’re not. Motorsports is certainly different in that way. Contractually, I have to honor my contract, which means non-competes and all of those kinds of things, so obviously I can’t be in the building and doing things for next year. I hear the rumblings of the test sessions and all that kind of stuff and certainly very curious as to how all that’s going, but my involvement is prohibited until the season is over.”
WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT THE CARS BEING DIFFERENT 10 YEARS AGO, WHAT DOES THIS GENERATION HAVE TO DO DIFFERENTLY THAN BACK THEN? “I remember going to Martinsville my first year or two in Cup and you’d come up off the corner and you would spin the rear tires, you’d have brand new tires and you would spin the rear tires for 100-feet on new tires, and at the end of the run, I mean, the whole straightaway you would spin the rear tires. You might not ever get flat foot and now the last race I ran at Martinsville I came up off the corner and just flat-footed it for thirty-some laps like I was driving a street car or something. That’s a big difference because your ability to really feel the feedback of the car and the rear tires and really modulate the gas pedal is really an important skill that you used to have to have, but now you don’t. That said, there are other skills you have to have now that you didn’t have to have back then. The choose lane and all those things and knowing where to be and knowing how to fill the gaps on restarts, that was not the case back then. I mean, shoot, the whole Texas thing — the debacle I had with, was it Jeff Gordon there? Today, that’s like every week. There’s a gap, you fill it. Every restart. Where back then it’s like, geez, you even tried to make a move like that and everybody lost their marbles. Things have changed for sure. You could argue for the better. You could argue for the worse, but they’re different and that’s life and that’s really every sport. There are parts of me that really miss going to a track like Texas and being 10 laps in and spinning the rear tires at 185 miles an hour. That was pretty darn cool. I’m not gonna lie, but there are other days I don’t miss. I don’t miss going to Michigan and hauling her off at 9 a.m. practice at 220 miles an hour thinking, ‘Man, I hope I don’t blow a tire. I’m gonna end up in the grandstands.’ So there are tradeoffs to everything.”
IS THERE A WAY TO HAVE ANY HOPE OF THE SPEED THING GETTING BETTER THIS WEEKEND, OR DO YOU JUST GO OUT THERE AND POSITION YOURSELF AND FIGURE IT OUT THAT WAY? “If we knew the knobs that well to be able to predict it, we would turn them every week, so I can’t say honestly. I really don’t know what I’m gonna have this weekend. If we went there and we ran top five all week and snuck out a race win, I wouldn’t be shocked. If we went to Vegas and ran 10th to 15th all week and finished in that range, I wouldn’t be shocked. I don’t know what to expect with respect to our performance.”
IS THAT UNSETTLING OR IS THAT JUST THE WORLD WE LIVE IN AND YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT THAT? “I think it’s part of the world we live in, that there are a lot of variables we can’t control and you get in the car and figure out what you’ve got and then you do the most you can with it to try to put yourself in a great position. I’m incredibly proud of the round that we had. We didn’t win a race. We didn’t contend to win a race in that first round, but we went to Darlington with a 15th-place car and put together a solid top-10 finish. We went to Richmond with a 15th to 20th-place car unfortunately, and put together a solid finish, got some stage points out of it and ended up 13th. And we went to Bristol with probably the best car we’ve had, probably a top-five car and scored the third-most points and finished sixth. In a lot of ways, the media and the fans look at the race winner as the guy that ran the best race. To me, I always look at the field and say, ‘Who did the best with the car they had?’ And I feel like we’re out-finishing our speed right now by a good bit and that’s a combination of certainly the moves I’m making on the racetrack and the moves that we make on pit road and with respect to pit strategy and the pit crew themselves, so I’m really proud of that. We knocked a few guys out of the first round that, quite frankly, were considerably faster than us, so that bodes well for us. If we can put the speed with all the other pieces we have, we’re a very dangerous team.”
THERE’S A WAVE OF FORMER DRIVERS NOW BECOMING CAR OWNERS. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS? “I think there’s a confluence of factors. The Next Gen car certainly had an effect — the visibility toward it, super important. I think there’s other quotients that lie in there too with respect to, like you said, generations and ways things have developed. Where are we at? Denny Hamlin, myself and who else? I guess Kyle has the truck team, but doesn’t have a Cup deal, but I would suspect there would be one or two others that join and do this over the next couple of years, which is great. The charter was a big piece of this, no doubt. It probably doesn’t get enough credit. I hear a lot of people bad mouth the charters. Honestly, there are parts I like and dislike about it, don’t get me wrong, but I think as a whole it’s been good for the sport. That said, I struggle to say there’s one factor. I’d say there’s a confluence of factors.”
