Brad Keselowski says he won't back down, will continue to race aggressively despite controversial crash with Carl Edwards

Brad Keselowski, the victim of Carl Edwards’ wrath at Atlanta Motor Speedway last week, says he doesn’t plan on changing how he races and doesn’t feel that he has been overly aggressive in the majority of the on-track incidents he has been blamed for.

The 26-year-old Penske Racing driver, whose car got airborne and slammed roof-first into the outside wall when Edwards intentionally wrecked him at Atlanta, has no intention of changing his driving style despite the latest in a series of incidents with other drivers in the past two years.

“To be honest, that’s probably the best revenge there is – to not let it get to me one bit, to not change,” Keselowski said Thursday. “In a way, that’s a sign to him and everyone else that that’s not going to work on me.

“I feel lucky to be in race cars that are as safe as they are, to be able to be here talking today and to be able to say, ‘Hey, I’ll take the lick’ and I’ll get out of the car and come back the next race weekend and drive just as hard just to prove a point that I wasn’t wrong and I still don’t feel like I’m wrong.”

Edwards, who was angry over contact from Keselowski earlier in the race and by previous run-ins with the driver, returned to the track at Atlanta to retaliate against Keselowski. He was parked by NASCAR after the incident and placed on probation for three races.

Keselowski said he is too biased to have a credible opinion on NASCAR’s penalty. He said he would have not felt good if Edwards had been suspended because fans would be confused by such a harsh penalty after the January announcement that NASCAR was loosening the reins on drivers and letting them police themselves on the track. 

As far as how far drivers can go without a points deduction or suspension, Keselowski said “whether or not that is somebody getting hurt, I hope not.” Keselowski said his reaction wouldn’t include payback toward Edwards.

“The thought in my mind is to do absolutely nothing at all,” Keselowski said, “to not change, to continue to drive my cars as hard as I can and try to win races [and not] to elevate my aggressiveness as far as being a  retaliatory driver or to downgrade my driving status. … To not justify it is the way to handle it. To not justify that rationale of thinking is the only way to defeat it.”

That doesn’t mean that Keselowski won’t look at tapes of the incident and figure out if he could have done anything differently while racing Edwards. He said he has looked at the incidents in the past with Denny Hamlin and others to see if he should have raced differently.

“I have the good fortune of having some time and the mental presence to be objective and realize that some of the things I might have done during that process might not have been the cool thing to do – I might have been a jerk,” Keselowski said. “I can see that. I can see a lot of different sides and a lot of different opinions and have respect for the majority of them.

“Specifically, the incident at Phoenix [with payback of Hamlin], what I did there was over my own line so to speak. The incidents before that, I don’t feel that way about, and the incidents after that, I don’t feel that way about.”

Keselowski said his aggressive driving style is what landed him the Cup ride at Penske Racing.

“It’s not possible to get a Cup ride right now without being aggressive and without having some swagger in your step,” Keselowski said. “Does that make you a jerk? To some people, yes. To some people, no. It depends on where you’re coming from. If you look at the sport right now, there are no new drivers coming in.

“So whatever I’m doing is working and it’s gotten me to where I’m at and I’ve survived this [lack] of development drivers that are not getting opportunities because of that attitude, because of that aggressiveness.”

Keselowski says that NASCAR is about being aggressive and racing for wins. He seemed perplexed that Edwards was mad at him for the contact at Atlanta. He said he was trying to give Edwards room on lap 40 when got into the back of Edwards’ car, which slipped up the track and ran into Joey Logano.

Keselowski and Edwards were involved in the infamous Talladega crash last April, in which Edwards tried to block Keselowski while racing for the win on the final lap and the two made contact, launching Edwards’ car into the catchfence after getting hit by Ryan Newman. Keselowski also spun Edwards while racing for the win in the Nationwide Series race at Memphis last year and the two also had contact in the Nationwide race at Daytona earlier this year that resulted in Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s car flipping upside down.

“Most of the incidents that I’ve had that I’ve gotten negative feedback on have not been because I’ve been aggressive, with the exception of maybe Memphis, but they’ve been simply because I held my line and was not willing to be pushed around,” Keselowski said. “If you consider that to be aggressive, I guess you have a different definition of aggressive than I do. I consider that holding your ground and not being pushed around.”

Keselowski made it clear that he didn’t approve of what Edwards did at Atlanta.

“I don’t feel like being aggressive had anything to do with the issues we had at Atlanta,” Keselowski said. “The previous run-ins we had in the past are fairly balanced on both sides, and I really don’t feel bad about the run-ins that we’ve had as far as the ones where he’s been at fault or the ones where I’ve been at fault because, to me, they were all hard-racing instances up until Atlanta.

“To say that aggressive driving solely on my side was the reason for this is not really something that I agree with. To take that even further and say, ‘Why would Carl be mad at you if that wasn’t the case?’ or ‘Why would Carl have done what he had done?’ I’m not entirely sure. … I don’t think a guy that is simply mad at you for the contact we had earlier in the race at Atlanta would do what he did. There’s probably more to the puzzle that I don’t know.”

Keselowski also said the wreck at Talladega was a “completely different circumstance” and is not comparable. After the Memphis race, Keselowski said he talked with Edwards privately about Memphis and admitted he was too aggressive. After that race, Edwards said if Keselowski wanted to make things exciting for fans, that Edwards could make it exciting.

“When other drivers are critical of you, it’s sort of like asking Steve Jobs if the stock in Apple is going to go up – of course, he’s going to say it’s going to go up because he has something to benefit from,” Keselowski said. “That’s the same thing with other drivers. If you ask other drivers’ opinions on other people or scenarios or the sport, they’re going to give you an answer that is self-beneficial.

“It’s hard to ask other drivers what they think of me and get a credible, objective answer. The only one I can think of it who does it consistently is Jeff Burton.”

Burton said Wednesday that Keselowski needs to learn to balance give-and-take on the race track.

“He’s absolutely right, but the thing is, the media doesn’t cover when I give, they cover when I take,” Keselowski said. “I wish I could sit down one day and just show somebody an in-car camera tape of how I drive a race and you would see that I give as much, if not more, than any other race-car driver out there.

“The difference is what my interpretation of give is versus what someone else’s interpretation of give is. When you go down in the corner on a restart and you’re all stacked up and there’s no place to go in front of you, giving to me is not running into the guy in front of you, giving him a break where you don’t run up behind him and get him loose and cause him to drive into the car next to him. The scenario in Atlanta on lap 40 was specifically that. The reason why Carl was able to even have the smallest of holes to turn into was because of the fact that I was giving because it was lap 40.”

So what created problem between them?

“This might be where other drivers see things differently than me – what giving is not to me is being in your lane and allowing somebody else to turn down into you, pushing you off the race track and lifting for them,” Keselowski said. “That is not giving to me. That is being bullied around and allowing yourself to be bullied around. There is a sharp and drastic difference between the two.”