First, before we even get to Brad Keselowski’s underappreciated pizazz, his return to Atlanta Motor Speedway, where last year he hit all lights just right, and his various thoughts on saving stock-car racing as we know it, there’s the matter of his collusion with the self-driving car.
It’s right there in his blog, the confession that he, an ultimate symbol of man’s dominion over internal combustion, bought a car with fully autonomous features.
Brad Keselowski, winner of two dozen Monster Energy Cup races and one Cup series championship has even allowed his car to parallel park for him. The last thing a professional driver should want is the rise of this particular machine – why, pretty soon his sport would just be over-sized, unmanned slot cars.
Letting a car drive for him should be at least as unthinkable as chief Gordon Ramsay cracking open a can of SpaghettiOs.
In his own defense, Keselowski said he did it only to gain intelligence. It was a know-your-enemy deal.
“If there’s something better than me, I want to learn what it’s doing,” he said.
So, did robocar squeeze into the space better than a professional driver?
“No, definitely not,” Keselowski said. “But you should definitely still study it.”
As a defender of the human race against automation, Keselowski is as good a spokesman as any from the ranks of NASCAR. He’s used to putting himself out there, whatever the topic. His regular online blog has dealt with subjects from the anthem controversy to the humanness of our sports personalities to, yes, the driverless car. He has a pit crew for that, too – an editor or two who help him with the blog’s structure.
“I get people to help me because if you saw the way I write, my English is not so good,” he said.
Certainly, there are mundane racing matters Keselowski might address, as well. Like his return this weekend to Atlanta Motor Speedway and the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500, which he won last year thanks a bolt of racing luck.
A driverless car wouldn’t have sped down pit lane with 14 laps to go in that race. But Kevin Harvick and his dominant car did, and the penalty opened the door for Keselowski to claim his first checkered flag in nine appearances in Atlanta.
He’s apologizing to no one. That was just balancing the scales of racing, Keselowski figured.
“Those things kind of work themselves out over time. There are races you probably should have won that fall apart. There are races you win from time to time that you look over your shoulder and say, ‘How did I win this one?’ The Atlanta race, we were probably a second-place car,” he said.
Keselowski can use the hug of a friendly track about now (“I love (AMS),” he professes). The Vegas favorite to win last week’s Daytona 500, he was caught up in an early wreck and finished 32nd. His average Daytona 500 finish in nine tries is 25th. Some races, like last week’s, he was the victim. Others, he said he “choked away,” breaking out a derogatory term that only the most secure athletes would dare to use on themselves.
He is a bit more unencumbered this season, having given up ownership of his truck team when the financial drain of it became just too much. A difficult decision, since that was a labor of love. “In some ways, it has been (freeing). It has let me have some more time with my family and work on some other issues that are important in my life – charities, business,” he said. “Yeah, in some ways. But I’ll definitely miss it as well.”
Much of the talk coming into the beginning of this NASCAR Monster Energy Cup season has been about the search for new stars. His sport is ready to promote the first youngster with a good smile and a couple of fast left-hand turns in him.
On one hand, the 34-year-old Keselowski is leery of just stepping aside and letting the next generation take over. And he’ll speak his mind on it, which is what makes him a real resource in racing. One that maybe isn’t mined enough.
“I’ve always held the belief, whether it’s in this circle – motorsports – or outside in business, that we should be promoting people based on their skills. Nothing else. Always on skills,” he said.
“As long as people are being promoted based on skills, and have earned that, I’m cool with it.”
On the other, it is one of Keselowski’s core concerns about his sport that drivers need to do more to uplift it, especially in times of declining popularity.
When he gets asked what he thinks NASCAR needs to change – in addition to taking a poke at series leader Brian France for being absent from too many races – he’ll point to himself and his peers.
Selling racing, projecting his personality outside the car, “is a part of my job,” he said.
Who knows, what follows may soon be coming to a blog near you. He has a running start on one:
“I have a very good lifestyle. I’m very privileged. That’s not lost on me,” he said. “I’m eating the fruits off a tree that was produced by generations before me – by Richard Petty, by Dale Earnhardt, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip. The list goes on. And I’m living off what they’ve created. In return for that, there’s a question that isn’t just for me, isn’t just for race-car drivers, it’s for all of us. What are we leaving behind for the next generation?
“I want to make sure I haven’t done something to the sport to damage it for future generations. And I’m trying the best I know how. They left a hell of legacy that I’m not so sure any of us are going to be able to fulfill for the next generation. But I do feel an obligation to kind of replant the seeds that grow the next orchard that the next generation is going to eat off.
“There’s not enough (drivers) onboard, and it’s not a predominant thinking. I absolutely wish there were more who cared about the future generations and opportunities in this sport.”
These cars don’t drive themselves, you know.
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