Sprint Cup champion is savvy social media king who isn't afraid to speak his mind


Darrell Waltrip and his production crew had wrapped up an early-season sit-down with Brad Keselowski last year when the three-time NASCAR champion-turned-Fox analyst casually solicited advice off camera.

What did Keselowski think of how TV covers stock car racing?

The loquacious Waltrip, once nicknamed "Jaws" for an articulate, brash and outspoken style that isn't unlike Keselowski's, chuckles while recalling the reply.

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"Man, he lit into us, and he had no shortage of telling us what we did wrong, what he didn't like and how we could do better," Waltrip told USA TODAY Sports. "He left, and we all looked at each other like, 'You've got to be kidding me. Who does this guy think he is? Then we talked a little bit and said, 'He did say a couple of things that make sense. Maybe that's the 28-year-old mentality.'"

On Keselowski's suggestion, Speed adjusted the opening of its broadcasts in which it had showed practice shots and ensured the camera always followed the cars to avoid missing any action (which it did when Juan Pablo Montoya spun on the opening lap of a session at Phoenix International Raceway).

It's among the more subtle of the myriad ways in which Keselowski is leveraging his newly minted clout and leaving a unique imprint on NASCAR with a worldview that is unlike any other primary ambassador in its 65-year history.

"He looks at the sport differently than a lot of guys have," Waltrip said. "He wants to be the go-to guy, but he wants to be different."

Keselowski differentiated himself in many ways during his third season in Sprint Cup beyond becoming the 29th driver to win a championship in NASCAR's premier series and the first under the employ of auto racing icon Roger Penske.

He needed 125 starts to claim the title, the fewest since Jeff Gordon was crowned the first of four times after 93 starts in 1995.

At 28, he became the eighth-youngest champion and the only titlist born after 1980.

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He became the first to tweet during a Cup race, gaining more than 100,000 followers after posting a photo of the jet dryer inferno that stopped the Daytona 500 for two hours.

"I can't believe how everything just came together over the last three years," he said. "And you know what? I feel like the best is yet to come. I really do."

The prevailing thread throughout Keselowski's emergence is of electric youth — the sort of technologically savvy, 21st-century chutzpah that places him squarely in the Generation Y demographic highly coveted by the Fortune 500 companies that plaster their logos on the 200-mph billboards whizzing around superspeedways across America every Sunday.

Those multimillion-dollar sponsors have been shrinking in a portentous trend that has dovetailed with lagging attendance and TV ratings. NASCAR has countered the erosion of popularity by launching a digitally oriented marketing offensive aimed at re-energizing and diversifying a graying fan base.

But perhaps the most felicitous jolt of interest would be supplied by having a champion as unconventionally enthusiastic as Keselowski, whose first public act as the face of the sport was chugging a beer out of a gargantuan beer glass during a SportsCenter interview that quickly went viral. A second-generation racer who has dreamed of becoming a Cup champion since childhood, he relishes the responsibility of spreading the sport's gospel while using the platform to reshape NASCAR in his vision.

Keselowski doesn't plan to build a trophy room to house his Sprint Cup, nor did he seem particularly enamored with the millions he earned in 2012. The spoils of his championship pale when compared to the large stick he can wield to galvanize the NASCAR industry, which he is on a self-appointed quest to "unify" in search of a greater good that he outlined in November during an eloquent acceptance speech at the postseason awards ceremony in Las Vegas.

"The respect shown to you by the community actually is above the money and the trophy," he said. "The respect by the community is priceless. Just the way you're treated by all those around you. That's really, really cool."

Keselowski struggles to articulate how life has changed other than "seeing some of the doors open up," but it all intertwines in newfound opportunities for transcendence.

He delivered the top 10 list on Late Show with David Letterman, was feted as guest of honor for a Thanksgiving Day parade in his hometown of Detroit and was anointed by Mashable as one of the country's must-follow athletes on Twitter. In January, he served as the guest DJ on his favorite alternative rock radio station in Charlotte.

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How long will Keselowski's ride last? It will be tough to repeat given that Penske is switching manufacturers for the first time in 10 years and transitioning to being an engine customer instead of a supplier. A new body style will reset every team's setups and erase the edges that Keselowski and crew chief Paul Wolfe maximized in the second half of last season.

But the team owner who handpicked him for the breakthrough Nationwide ride that was the springboard to Penske Racing thinks there are inherent traits that will keep Keselowski at the top of his game.

"I knew he was going to win a championship one day," said Dale Earnhardt Jr., who plucked Keselowski from relative obscurity for JR Motorsports' No. 88 Chevrolet more than five years ago. "I knew he was definitely capable of being a dominant force in the sport. He can really maintain that level of competitiveness as much as he wants. He's a student of the game. He's a student of the cars and the mechanics of the car and how things work. He's really focused on the particulars. So I expect him to be on the tip of everybody's tongue for many, many years."

Certainly for at least the next year, Keselowski will have the NASCAR world's ear, and he likely will espouse a jarring juxtaposition of opinions that can vacillate between dazzlingly insightful and delightfully inane.

He will offer a hard-line stance on banning the use of dietary supplements (in Keselowski's world, Flintstones vitamins qualify as performance-enhancing drugs). He will spin yarns about buying World War II-era tanks with Earnhardt and re-creating famous battles on the sprawling estate of NASCAR's most popular driver.

He can speak in hushed tones about his reverence for the veterans of the sport ... and slam them in the next breath with derisive accusations that his elders lack his courage for dicing in the 200-mph draft at Daytona International Speedway.

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He alternately comes across as a careful consensus builder and a brazen non-conformist. The overarching takeaway, though, is that he isn't a highly programmed, overly scripted star, but an approachable, accessible and engaging personality whose eccentricity is endearing in a commercially driven sport that sometimes has allowed Corporate America to bleach out the emotionally charged episodes that fueled NASCAR's rise.

"He's a little bit out there sometimes," Waltrip said. "But he doesn't back up.

"We're at a changing of the guard. Keselowski is the leader of that change. I think he's the right guy for where the sport is now."

Taking on the establishment

The changing of the guard is significant, because it's the first time since 2005 that NASCAR's champion hasn't been named Jimmie Johnson or Tony Stewart.

Those superstars were the ringleaders of playfully indoctrinating Keselowski during a Champion's Week celebration in Las Vegas that felt tantamount to Hell Week in a college fraternity.

The newest pledge to NASCAR's most prized pantheon was hazed with tequila shots and incessant ribbing at fan and news media events. Every Chase for the Sprint Cup driver who bought a drink charged it to Keselowski's room at the Wynn, and season runner-up Clint Bowyer joked that he would try to bill a Ferrari.

Keselowski, whose baby-faced visage and 5-10, 160-pound physique seemed befitting of the teasing, was nonplussed by his antagonists. "It's not my room bill," he said. "It's NASCAR's room bill. I technically don't have a room. They can charge, but it's not mine. I'm like Shaggy. It wasn't me."

That pop-culture reference also might explain how Keselowski has been influenced by his upbringing. Being the youngest of five kids in a middle-class family with a blue-collar work ethic teaches you how to scrap. Keselowski has learned the worth of paying dues.

"As long as I'm winning, that's OK," he said. "It's normal in any society to treat the youngest guy or new guy with the roughest gloves. That's OK. I feel I've soldiered through it and persevered because of it. Every time they do that, I smile inside, because it only makes me stronger."

Keselowski has been battling with the establishment virtually since he began contending for Nationwide victories in 2008 — his first season of driving full time for Earnhardt. He memorably butted heads and clanged fenders with Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards.

With the exception of Busch, he has built cordial relations with each. There are still moments when his rebellious nature leaves his peers cringing — such as the 2012 Chase for the Sprint Cup photo shoot at Millennium Park in Chicago in September, when Keselowski was the only driver who refused to remove his sunglasses despite persistent prodding.

But there seems to be a general appreciation for the indomitable spirit and indefatigable drive of Keselowski, who permanently changed many perceptions in August 2011 by winning at Pocono Raceway on a broken ankle just days after a wicked testing crash.

In Las Vegas, Johnson and Stewart counseled Keselowski on the importance of celebrating his championship.

"Tony and I were both telling him to slow it down and enjoy every moment if you can, and hopefully he is," Johnson said.

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While mischievously goading Keselowski into alcohol-drenched "traditions" of a champion, Stewart also has been protective of his title successor as if he were the little brother he never had, imploring the news media to give Keselowski a wider berth for brutal candor and honest mistakes than the three-time champion thinks he was given.


"I think that's what the fans want to hear. But I'm so scared that at some point somebody is going to turn on him and it goes downhill from there."

Four-time champion Gordon, who has lamented being too image-conscious, says Keselowski's rough-around-the-edges persona is a boon for NASCAR.

"You've got to be who you are and let that shine," Gordon said. "I think that's what I see in him. It doesn't seem there's much fazing him and changing him, at least not what I've seen so far, so I don't anticipate it happening. I think what he's done has been extraordinary, and he's going to continue to do extraordinary things. As long as he gets the job done behind the wheel, that's all that matters."

Yet there will be times when the congeniality of the sport's top diplomat will be tested. The media demands will escalate on Keselowski, who sometimes doesn't suffer repetitive lines of questioning.

During his coronation in Las Vegas, "How will you handle the pressure of being a defending champion?" drew some playful derision.

"How many more times am I going to get asked about this?" Keselowski retorted with a smile. "I feel like you guys take the same question and just change it. 'You know Christmas is coming next week, do you feel the pressure to buy the right gift? New Year's is coming up, do you feel the pressure to change your life with the proper New Year's resolution?'

"How many pressure questions can you guys come up with? I don't feel like there are any expectations. I don't have any expectations. My expectations are to have fun and enjoy being a champion, and I haven't thought about it any further than that."

But at least some self-reflection will be incumbent in his new role.

"You're the spokesperson for the sport," Waltrip said. "That's good news and bad news. The good news is people are going to listen to what you have to say. The bad news is people are going to have to listen to what you have to say. So you better be saying the right things."

After Waltrip won his first championship in 1981, NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr. asked him to tone down his takes that could range from contrarian to controversial to conspiracy theorist.

"Bill France said, 'The media is going to come to you, but when we need someone to represent the sport, you're the guy,'" Waltrip said. "You've got to remember it's not just about you. ...

"When you're the champion, you're representing everybody. So when you say something, people say, 'Is that what the sport is really like? Is that what those people are really like?' You have to temper your opinions. You don't have to be politically correct and still can be opinionated; you just have to be careful how you sell it."

'He's genuine, he's real'

Keselowski has learned much about nuance in maintaining his iconoclast image while representing Penske Racing, perhaps the most buttoned-up and corporate-friendly team in racing. It was Penske that introduced starched white shirts and clean-swept garage floors to the grease-under-the fingernails environs of Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

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It was a popular triumph for the business magnate, whose non-racing empire includes a multibillion-dollar automotive dealership network. Penske, 75, said he received thousands of text messages and e-mails after last season's finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He was beaming in Vegas when he recalled walking into his Detroit office on the Monday after Homestead and seeing a large championship banner that was hung in 1,500 business locations owned by Penske Corp. across the USA.

"It was just a culmination of a lot of people's hard work," Penske said. "My name happens to be on the building, but someone has to help build that building."

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Keselowski has become a primary architect on the NASCAR wing. Encouraged by Penske to embrace leadership when Kurt Busch left the team after the 2011 season, Keselowski began wielding more clout in Penske's direction from mechanical (pushing the team publicly to pursue speed via the rear-end suspension tricks employed by Johnson and Hendrick Motorsports) to personnel (lobbying for new teammate Joey Logano).

His champion's speech in Vegas — an off-the-cuff address that hit on themes of harmony, humility and piety — felt like what a keynote speaker might say at the sort of high-powered business convention that Penske would convene.

"It was a long night, and I had an opportunity to write two to three bullet points down," Keselowski said. "I like to feel the vibe of something before I commit to anything. I just feel great speeches come from within."

Said Penske: "He took the whole scene — what people said and what he felt from the heart — and put it all together. ... I think he's going to drive the sport further. I think he's going to be a great champion and one that we'll all say he deserves it.

"I know how he thinks. I think that he's genuine, he's real."

Much of that is manifested through social media prowess. If he isn't gripping a steering wheel, Keselowski usually has a smartphone that he is thumbing through furiously for updates. Through he is known for being the most active Twitter user in professional sports, there was an inauspicious introduction to the concept. Keselowski started on MySpace ("then I realized MySpace is creepy") and moved to Facebook, which mistakenly closed his account because it was thought to be an impostor's.

After "eight to 10 months of bitterness," Keselowski began using a Twitter application on an iPad he received from Nationwide for winning the 2010 championship.

Since the start of 2011, he has interacted constantly with fans and the media, retweeted items during postrace interviews and sent in-race tweets at least three times (the last earned a $25,000 fine and probation from NASCAR during a red flag at Phoenix International Raceway).

"Social media is the modern-day autograph," he said. "It's an opportunity to put yourself out there in a way that isn't possible in today's society."

Particularly when your goals for having an impact on the sport are as lofty as Keselowski's.

"I think there are a lot of great people within the sport, and when we work together, we can move mountains," he said. "We all have that responsibility to make this sport better than what it was and how we left it.

"I believe that's going to require a lot of leadership from a circle of drivers. Maybe being the champion will give me that opportunity to do so."


Follow Nate Ryan on Twitter @nateryan