Ford Performance NASCAR: Brad Keselowski Looking for Two Straight Wins

Quaker State 400 Advance – Kentucky Speedway

Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion, is coming off his third win of the season after taking the checkered flag in Saturday’s Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway.  Keselowski, who is running in the NASCAR XFINITY and NASCAR Sprint Cup Series events this weekend at Kentucky Speedway, spoke to members of the media about a variety of topics.

BRAD KESELOWSKI – No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion – HOW DO YOU FEEL THINGS HAVE GONE THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEASON FROM A RACING STANDPOINT?  “We’re in the summer stretch here, obviously, and a lot always seems to happen here.  It’s one of my favorite stretches to get into.  This track is one that really kind of highlights it for me.  It’s been very good to me here at Kentucky Speedway.  We’ve got Loudon coming up, which has been good to me, and then a few weeks here to go back to my home track.  We’ve got Bristol coming up and Watkins Glen, so I think this is one of my best stretches and our best stretches as a team here with the two teams.  I’m looking forward to that and it has been a very interesting and fun season so far.  Of course, it’s easy for me to say when I’ve got three wins, but I want to keep going on that.  I think we have a great opportunity over the next few weeks to add another win or two and, hopefully, start the Chase off as the number one seed.  So I’m really just thrilled with that.  Thinking about the sport in general, a lot of strong momentum with things that are going on behind the scenes that I’m thrilled about with the cars and the rules and all the collaboration.  It’s really a fun time for me personally and professionally with everything that’s going on.  I’m just happy to be here and want to keep going.”

YOU’RE SO GOOD HERE WERE YOU THE LAST ONE THAT WANTED TO SEE ANY CHANGES AND HOW DOES DOING DOUBLE-DUTY HELP YOU THIS WEEKEND?  “I definitely didn’t want to see them change the track, but I appreciate the position that Marcus Smith and everybody at SMI was in with issues like the weepers.  Those are always hard to fix without just going through and redoing the whole track.  I really liked it as a bumpy race track.  I thought that was something that was unique and I adapted well to, but, of course, no one wants to sit and wait on the track to dry when it has weepers, so I understood that part.  One of the interesting things that I’ve really appreciate about the repave is that when they repaved it they changed one and two dramatically.  One and two kind of feels more like almost like Kansas.  It’s really fast.  In the XFINITY cars, we can run wide-open through that corner and we weren’t even close to that before.  I think that end is really fast.  This end over here is really slow, treacherous, hard to get a hold of, and so there’s a big discrepancy between the two ends.  I think anytime you have a track like that it lends itself to compromises with race car drivers, techniques and car setups, and all those things that tend to open up the box to allow for better racing because whenever there are those discrepancies, I think that’s when you see mistakes and when you see strengths and weaknesses that vary from car to car and driver to driver.  I think that’s a really good thing for our sport, so I’m interested to see how that is gonna play out this weekend.  Obviously, there is only so much I know, having not run a race on the new surface, and that’s why I’m running the XFINITY race is to try to get a little bit ahead of my competition before Saturday night.  Hopefully, that pays off and we can get another win at the Cup level and the XFINITY level.”

WHAT IS YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON HOW YOUR TRUCK TEAM HAS PERFORMED THIS YEAR?  “I think we have two drivers over there that are competing full-time.  It would be very easy for me or a handful of other Cup or XFINITY drivers to jump in and out of those trucks and probably raise the numbers, so to speak.  That’s really not the goal.  The goal is to get Daniel Hemric and Tyler Reddick a quality opportunity that can position themselves for a future in this sport as a professional race car driver.  To do that they need to run full seasons and have all of those things available to them.  I think as a group we’re still trying to get to where we can run with the Toyotas.  They’re really, really fast over there.  They’ve got good teams and incredible resources, so we’re not quite at the A level, but we’re fluttering right there at that B-plus level and I think we can break through at any moment.  I think Daniel Hemric has been really close to winning a race.  Tyler Reddick has been close to winning a race.  We need just a little bit more speed and a little bit more execution, and I think either one of those things can happen overnight if we keep plugging away.  So I feel as good as you can feel without having a win that we will get some wins and that we will get into the Truck Series Chase with time, but we’re not quite there yet obviously.  Maybe this is the weekend.”

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE CHASE FORMAT AND CAUTION CLOCK?  “The Chase, of course, lines up more directly with the Cup Series.  I guess from the fan’s standpoint that probably makes it a little bit easier to follow.  I don’t want to speak for everyone else.  I felt I had a pretty good hold before understanding-wise.  And the caution clock I think it’s maybe a little bit too early to have a judgment on it.  I’d like to see it go through a whole season, but it certainly has changed the races dramatically in my opinion.  The pit stops have gone up and the tires and the strategy and all those things, it affects the race even when it doesn’t come out because you have to plan for it.  If a yellow comes out and you’re just outside of your fuel window when the caution clock expires, you’re forced to make some tough decisions.  So it affects the race even when it doesn’t come out, and I think that’s a key part to understanding that.  I’m not entirely sure I’ve formed a full opinion on it.”

DOES THIS TRACK STILL HAVE SOME UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS THAT WILL PLAY INTO IT EVEN WITH THE REPAVE?  “It definitely has a bump off of turn two.  I haven’t drove a Cup car on it to see if it affects the Cup car, but it doesn’t affect the XFINITY car.  I think right now the character can be defined by the differences in banking and width between the two corners.  Again, how that makes you come to a compromise with car setups and driving styles.”

WHAT KIND OF COMPROMISE?  “Compromises for the race team and the car is whenever you have one corner that has more banking, more speed, you look at the platform of the car and how it sits on the race track.  There’s a certain way that you would max out that corner that doesn’t work on this end.  In fact, it’s probably the complete opposite, so I would say those compromises from the car setup end, and then as a driver, I think you can be a lot more aggressive on one end than you can the other.  So one end is more of an aggressive corner from a driver’s perspective and the other more finesse.  Switching gears in the car is not always easy to do every straightaway, every lap between being aggressive and having a lot of finesse, so I think that makes it unique.”

DO YOU HAVE AN EDGE WITH THIS NEW PACKAGE?  “I don’t know.  I feel like we’ve been running well, whether it’s low downforce or not.  We don’t have as many wins with the other regular low downforce.  We need a better name than low downforce and lower downforce, but I feel like the results have been more positive for us, but I don’t feel a real difference in the cars, so I don’t know.”

HOW MUCH HAVE THINGS CHANGED OVERALL FROM WHERE THE SPORT WAS A YEAR AGO AT THIS RACE?  “I would say this race a year ago was a huge landmark for our sport that maybe goes a little bit unnoticed.  In terms of we had a collaborative effort for a rules package and we saw a significant increase, in my opinion, of the on-track product that we saw.  And I think that showcased a lot of hope for our abilities to work together as a sport that has kind of created a wave of momentum that we’re carrying today.”

WHAT AFFECT DO YOU FEEL THIS LOWER DOWNFORCE PACKAGE WILL HAVE ON THE RACE WITH THIS NEWLY REPAVED SURFACE?  “I don’t know if it will have a different effect here than it has everywhere else, concerning the repave.  In general, the cars at Michigan were really, really loose behind someone.  I would expect that to be the same and I would expect turns three and four to really, really be a challenge because it’s such a finesse corner already.  Then you add the lower downforce package to it and it’s really gonna be a hold-onto-your-butt corner, but I’m not sure I can fully answer that until the race is over.  Hindsight is a lot better vision.”

YESTERDAY WE SAW A DRIVER PENALIZED FOR HIS ACTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA.  DO YOU FEEL THE DRIVERS NOW HAVE A BETTER INDICATION OF WHAT IS ACCEPTED AND TOLERABLE?  “No.  I don’t know.  I was a little surprised by both the comments and the reaction to be quite honest.  I thought there was an understanding or at least an understanding from my perspective that it’s probably not a good idea to say what was said, but on the other side, it’s my feeling that we all have to have a little bit thicker skin than that as well.  So my overall thoughts on it is that two wrongs don’t make a right.”

WHERE WOULD YOU PUT YOUR TEAM IN TERMS OF BEING READY FOR THE CHASE?  “There are always things that we want to get better at, but this summer stretch to me is really going to define our teams’ capabilities because we know it’s some of our best race tracks.  I feel like if we can come through this stretch and knock out another win or two that we’ll be kind of sitting in high cotton for the Chase and hopefully we’ll be able to carry that.”

HOW DO YOU THINK THE CHASE SETUP HAS EVOLVED IN THESE FIRST THREE YEARS?  “I think over time fans start to maybe appreciate and understand it a little bit better and so do teams and drivers — all of the industry as well.  I think over time as we start to understand it we start to lose some of those variables that come into play and we start to know what risks are smart risks to take and what risks aren’t.  I think in the first year we saw a driver without winning a race the whole season almost won the championship, and it kind of reminded me a little bit of the first Chase in ’04 when you saw teams that would run really well and then they would blow up or have a DNF and it seemed almost like no one wanted to win it.  And then the Chase in its older format from the mid to late 2000s developed into a pure points race, where one bad race and you knew you were kind of out of it.  So it was interesting to see that change, and I think you’re gonna see the same change over time if you kind of back up the lens a little bit to see the whole vision of the new Chase, that it’s gonna turn into the same thing where it becomes a don’t wreck, really conservative lay-up format.  That’s kind of where I’ve seen it kind of migrate over time.”

WOULD YOU ADVOCATE SEEING THIS PACKAGE PERHAPS ONE MORE TIME BEFORE THE CHASE, IF YOU FEEL THERE IS A CERTAIN DIRECTION IT SHOULD GO?  “I think, obviously subject to change after this weekend is over, but my initial thought is I would like to see it back at Michigan with just a few subtle changes that can be ascertained from what we’ve learned over this weekend and the previous Michigan weekend.  Maybe a small tweak from what we’ve learned and go again at Michigan in the second race would kind of be my initial thought, so I would say yes.”

 

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SpeedwayMedia.com

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Best New Zealand Online Casinos

RacingJunk.com and Leaf Racewear Safety Equipment Giveaway

Rocketplay Casino

10 deposit casinos

Best Betting Sites in Canada

bettingtop10.ca

Latest articles