Brad Keselowski glad to have a chance to shave off learning curve at Penske Racing
Brad Keselowski will make his first start for Penske Racing in Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway. // Walter Scriptunas, NASCAR Scene
FORT WORTH, Texas – A freshly shaven Brad Keselowski arrived at Texas Motor Speedway Friday eager to jump in the No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge for the first time in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
It seemed fitting that Keselowski got a shave before his debut with the team he’ll compete for full time next season. This, after all, is a new beginning.
And Keselowski admits he doesn’t know exactly what to expect.
“It’s just trying to lay a base to know what to work on,” he said Friday at Texas, noting that no one from Penske asked him to shave his goatee. “I don’t know if I can define what to work on right now because I really have no expectations good or bad. Everything to me is just a complete evaluation on both sides – for them to evaluate me, figure out my strengths and weakness and vice versa for the team, and in the end we’re all going to gel together and be one big happy family.
“So this is a good way to get off on the right foot to have three races and then a full winter to address whatever things we feel like we’ll need to address.”
The Penske organization announced earlier this week that Keselowski would replace driver David Stremme with three races left in 2009 to get a jump on 2010 rather than waiting for next season as originally planned. Keselowski has driven in 14 Cup races over the past two seasons, competing for both Hendrick Motorsports and Phoenix Racing this season. He won the Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway earlier this year driving for Phoenix.
Keselowski will also finish out the Nationwide Series season in the No. 88 JR Motorsports Chevrolet that he’s driven to six wins in a little more than two seasons.
So what are the 25-year-old’s impressions of his first day behind the wheel of a Penske car on a race weekend?
“My initial thoughts are that I was really surprised at how much different things are,” he said. “I didn’t expect them to be as much different as they are. The strengths are in different areas and the strengths and weaknesses are more defined than I thought they would be. So that’s really interesting.
“It was great the first time I got in the car and drove it off in the corner and said, ‘Wow, this thing drives way better here,’ but then there were two or three other areas where it was like ‘Wow, it drives way worse.’ It’s just a matter of putting strengths and weaknesses together and keeping the strengths and getting together and figuring out what we need to make the weaknesses better.”
Keselowski is paired with crew chief Roy McCauley this weekend but said he doesn’t know if McCauley will continue in that role next season after working with Stremme throughout 2009.
While Keselowski might be the new guy at the three-car Penske organization, he doesn’t plan to plan to merely stand by and learn from more experienced teammates Kurt Busch and Sam Hornish Jr.
“I’m not going to come in and be quiet, that’s for sure,” he said. “I’m going to come in and do everything I can to get this program running and going off the ground on Day One. We want to go to Daytona next year and be a contender and be a team that you guys [in the media] say can make the Chase [For The Sprint Cup]. That’s the goal. And these three races are our chance to build that momentum for next year.”
Keselowski, who has built a reputation from both his part-time Cup schedule and his Nationwide experience for sometimes being overly aggressive, isn’t all that worried about changing that perception with his new team.
“As far as disproving it or proving it, I don’t know if I’m the right guy to judge,” he said. “I think I’m standing too close to the fire to give you a good answer for that. Certainly I’ve been very aggressive lately, but the circumstances I thought have dictated that. It’s only been over the last few weeks.
“It’s not like the last two years. I think over the last two years I haven’t really wrecked anyone and then the last few weeks I’ve wrecked three or four people. I think some of it is coincidence more than anything else and I feel bad about that for sure, but I don’t feel like that necessarily [defines] my style.”
Keselowski has been involved in a number of on-track incidents this year, most notably with Carl Edwards in the Cup race Keselowski won at Talladega in April and with Denny Hamlin in the Nationwide Series race at Dover last month.
Some competitors also criticized Keselowski for driving aggressively recently at Memphis Motorsports Park.
“It’s so easy to make somebody mad,” Keselowski said. “Everybody these days is too sensitive. I mean, way too sensitive. Just relax. It’s just racing. All we do is drive cars in circles; we’re not curing cancer over here.
“It’s a challenge, but we do everything we can to have fun and not make people mad at the same time.”
