The book on Brad Keselowski describes him as a great racing talent, an entrepreneur off the track, a deep thinker and someone who loves to celebrate the military and the United States.
So as NASCAR heads to race on the streets of Chicago for the second straight year around the July 4th holiday, it seemed appropriate to sit down with the 2012 Cup champion who also co-owns RFK Racing. He also owns KAM Manufacturing, which uses the latest 3-D technology to create pieces for space, defense and other industries.
Keselowski, who snapped a 110-race winless streak earlier this year at Darlington, talked with FOX Sports about his love of country (his foundation works with veterans), racing at Chicago, what it means to make the playoffs and why he questions everything.
Seriously, he questions everything. From the start of this conversation ...
I wanted to talk to you because you tend to be a bit patriotic ...
So you have a yearly schedule and you're like trying to figure out where to slot drivers in? That's how this works?
And Chicago is a big race. So I kind of want a big name for a big race.
Oh, thank you, Bob. That's really kind. I always wondered how this works.
So are you just a Midwesterner who loves country and was it part of your roots as far as love of country?
It comes from a place of gratitude — gratitude is really important. Perspective of knowledge, which is reading about civilization, time, history — and those two kind of coming together in such a way where you just recognize how fortunate we are to be where we are today. And I'm not saying that our world is perfect. I'm not saying that our country is perfect. But I would rather live here right now than most any other place in time in the world.
And you're racing in Chicago this weekend — what was the cool factor of racing on the streets of Chicago?
The coolest part was being able to walk from your hotel to the race track, to be in a city — that drive off of Turn 6 or Turn 7, where you can see the skyline, it's a really unique and incredible experience.
You talk about reading up on civilization — you seem to read a lot, you seem to question everything. I'm curious, why do you question everything?
That's the pursuit of knowledge is to question everything, right? And a lot of things you read and see are most likely true, but too many aren't. And you'll never know truth unless you question.
You obviously have a few businesses—- RFK, KAM among them. I'm curious, you talked about reading. Do people ever think you went to college?
All the time. All the time.
Do they ask you when you are in these meetings with other CEOs? And what do you tell them?
I tell them I've got a GSD. I didn't get a PhD? GSD is Get Stuff Done.
I thought it was going to be Google Search Degree.
Haha. That could be another one — a lot of ways you can go with that. [Joey] Logano and I always joke about that we say we've got GSDs because neither of us went to college. He calls it a "get shit done." I call it a "get stuff done." Both work.
And do people seem surprised at that?
To some degree, which is OK. Honestly, you get to a point in age where you just don't care what other people think about things like that. You're like, "You know, scoreboard."
Speaking about the way people think, we were all thinking that you were wigging out over non-win after non-win after non-win. And you said you weren't focused on that. But I'm curious since the win, have you felt any more relaxed? ... Was there a big weight lifted off your shoulders or anything like that?
I hate to say it didn't have any effect on me because clearly winning is great. It's good for our team. It's good for me personally. It's great for our partners and everybody. But I would say it didn't take long after getting that first win of the season, and really my first points win for RFK, to quickly shift gears into, "All right, that was good. Next." That's a really natural transition for a competitor because you look at the way motorsports is set up and to steal a quote from Roger Penske, "You get a quarterly report every week." And what that really means is whether you have a good weekend or a bad weekend, it's only a few days later where it resets. You don't get a lot of time to enjoy your success. But also you can very quickly move on from a bad race, too. So it's an interesting dynamic and environment. After winning Darlington, it was only a couple of weeks later where we had a bad weekend. And you're like, "All right, winning, Darlington was nice, it checks a box for us, it locks us in the playoffs. I think we were going to probably make it anyway. But also we've got to keep performing." You can't just win one race and be like, "All right, I'm going to ride around in the back of the pack." We've got to keep performing. And that mentality, I think, quickly overcomes.
The quarterly or weekly report on Chris Buescher would say that he's just on the bubble to make the playoffs and yet he nearly won a few races. So what does that report tell you versus what you see on the track?
It just says how fickle a sport this is. Chris has had some really great races. He's on a good stretch right now of competitive runs. Maybe Gateway didn't quite go the way he wanted to. But if you look at Sonoma, if you look at New Hampshire, even looking back to Charlotte, we ran really well and in Kansas, where he got as close to winning as you physically can, and Darlington — he's on a stretch races where he could win any week. He's doing all the right things, but he hasn't caught any breaks. When he does, look out.
Are you stressed over whether he makes the playoffs or not?
Anytime you're not in, you're stressed about it. And we know that even though he's got a couple-car gap to the cutoff, a couple of new winners, and that's gone very fast. We feel that pressure to get him in, feel the pressure to make sure he has the right equipment and the resources around him. We're doing all we can, and I'm confident that he can get it done.
From an owner's perspective, what's the difference between making the playoffs and missing the playoffs?
From an owner's perspective, it's catastrophic to miss the playoffs — whether it's your sponsorships, your OEM [manufacturer] relationships, your ability to recruit and retain talent in the shop or on the road or pit crew. It's a really, really big deal.
Will the new charter agreement potentially allow teams to focus more on hiring talent versus needing sponsorship as the majority of their funding?
If I go back in time 20 years ago, the dynamic was, as far as funding a team, 90 percent sponsorship-based, 10 percent outside revenues, which might be race purse or outside revenues. And if you take a snapshot of where we are today, maybe it's closer to 75 sponsorship, and 25 percent purse or outside revenue so to speak. It appears the new charter agreement is going to get that somewhere closer to 65-35, which is a shift that can't be understated. But the reality of that is it still doesn't fully flip the script so to speak. It's just a step in the right direction.
You told the story on Harvick's podcast about how Roger Penske told you we're not going to do all those things you demanded to come to the team and then later OK'd all those things and you ended up at Penske. Did that teach you anything about having faith, that things will work out, that things will happen that you hope to happen — knowing that they don't always will but there is a benefit to just having faith?
Yeah, whether it be my faith or some of my experiences, it served me well throughout my life that you do what you know is right even if the short-term consequences seem unfavorable and ultimately the long-term consequences will be possible. I try to live my life that way to this day in all aspects, although I'm not perfect at it. I try to have a values-based thinking, which is more long-term than it is short-term. Based on where I am here today and the life I'm privileged to live, I think that's working out and I'll continue to do so.
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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