Penske driver neck-and-neck with 5-time champ Johnson
Keselowski not backing down
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| Jimmie Johnson (left) and Brad Keselowski bump toward the end of Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway. (AP) |
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Brad Keselowski recognizes how fortunate he is to be racing at NASCAR’s top level, and uses the kind of joke a guy would tell his buddy over a beer as a metaphor for the situation he finds himself in.
In Keselowski’s version of the joke, an unemployed man prays every night to win the lottery as a means to end his struggles. As times goes on with no response, he angrily demands an answer only for God to tell him “Try buying a ticket!”
“I’m a lottery winner, this I know,” explains Keselowski, “but I’ve bought a ton of tickets.”
And that’s how Keselowski has kept his cool so far in this heavyweight title fight with five-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson.
The 28-year-old has yet to flinch in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship, which is down to the final two races and, realistically, only two drivers. Keselowski opened the Chase with a win at Chicago, surrendered it to Johnson the next week at New Hampshire, grabbed it back the next week at Dover and held it 3 more weeks through Kansas.
Then Johnson snatched it back with a win at Martinsville to take a two-point lead in the standings, and widened the margin to seven points with a second consecutive victory last weekend at Texas. But Keselowski went down swinging – he was the leader on three restarts in the final 19 laps, only coming up short on the hold-your-breath, door-banging final dash to the finish with Johnson.
But Keselowski’s back is against the wall now headed into Sunday’s race at Phoenix International Raceway, where Johnson is a four-time winner and has a 5.3 average finish.
Johnson won the Chase race at Phoenix in his 2007 championship season to shake Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon loose in the title race. Johnson won there again in 2008 and 2009 to turn the season
finales into mere
formalities, and he
finished third in 2010 to climb off the ropes and rally the next week to stop Denny Hamlin
from snapping his streak of five consecutive championships.
It’s not Keselowski’s best track, but he doesn’t have much history at Phoenix.
Keselowski is in just his third Sprint Cup season with Penske Racing, and Sunday will be his seventh career start at Phoenix. So, sure, his numbers aren’t pretty with only one career top-five finish – but it was this year, when he finished fifth.
And he’s adamant he’s not overthinking this, and he won’t fall victim to the nerves or stress or pressure that seemed to rattle Hamlin down the stretch in 2010 or Carl Edwards on the final weekend of last year’s battle with Tony Stewart.
“The good Lord willing that we get through Phoenix and we’re in position to win the championship, I am going to show up at that racetrack mentally prepared because I’ve been through moments that were far more stressful than that and far more challenging for me personally,” he said. “It’s because of those moments, all the failures that I had as a younger driver, that I’m prepared for these opportunities and this moment right now. There’s a bunch of them that they just add up to where they’re both funny and sad. They’re part of who I am and part of what has made me appreciate what I have.”
