It’s not possible to get a Cup ride right now without being aggressive and without having some swagger in your step.- Brad Keselowski. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
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.
