To kick this conversation off, I have a message for everyone who loves driving and motorsports. And that message is this: Don’t worry. You have nothing to fear. Autonomous cars aren’t a threat to racing, and they never will be. (They might be a threat to our safety, but more on that later.)

A Ford Explorer is the car I drive daily, but in full disclosure, I bought a car that has fully autonomous features. That might shock a lot of you, but the way I think about it is kind of like one of my favorite scenes from The Hunt for Red October. A couple Russians are speaking while Alec Baldwin, an American, is in the room. To their surprise, Baldwin starts talking in Russian, too. When asked why he knows Russian, Baldwin says that it’s wise to know his enemy. That’s kind of how I feel about autonomous vehicles. In a way, they’re my greatest adversary as a race car driver, so I want to know everything I can about them.

With my own autonomous car, I use the adaptive cruise control a lot (basically, a kind of autopilot), the radar for parking, and the parallel park functions. The car does pretty well in traffic on the freeway, so that’s cool. But at the end of the day, it’s kind of confirmed what I was already feeling about autonomous cars in general.

It’s worth saying that my own opinion here kind of makes me laugh because I generally don’t have a lot of patience for people who are overly pessimistic. But I am of the opinion that the autonomous vehicle will never succeed in the United States, and at least part of how I feel comes from being a race car driver.

WHAT IS AUTONOMOUS?

With respect to what a fully autonomous vehicle is, a famous car executive once explained that autonomous can mean different things to different people, and broke things down into different categories:

“We’ve been working on autonomous vehicles for over 10 years. Our approach is twofold. One is to be a leader in advanced driver assist and semiautonomous features, features that will keep you in your lane, that will alert you about traffic, that will adapt your speed…That was what they call level zero through three, where the driver has to be in control. Then there’s level four, where the driver or passenger does not need to be prepared to take control…Level-four vehicles—[which operate] in a defined area that’s been 3-D mapped—we think that somebody in the industry will have by the end of the decade. A level-five vehicle, which is, you go into your car, you hit a button, you go to sleep and you wake up at grandma’s house, that is a long way away—15, 20 years.”

Twenty years ago, cruise control would have basically been autonomous. Today, people think of the Tesla autopilot as autonomous.

For millennials, autonomous basically means, “I don’t have to do anything.” You can listen to music, play the air guitar, read on your iPad, and not do anything behind the wheel of a car. You just get in a car, push a button, and go from point A to point B without having to do anything to get to your destination. The car does everything. It’s what the car executive would have called a level five.

That’s the version I’m going use for this discussion: the fully autonomous vehicle.

THE HUMAN ELEMENT

As a race car driver, I deal with situations all the time where I have to see things coming before they happen. Talladega is kind of a perfect example of that. Being able to run a race at Talladega is all about quick reactions, predictive analysis, and the ability to step in before something goes wrong. I try to see a scenario two or three laps before it’s going to happen. I try to be prepared for it, and to be positioned for it not to affect me.

Imagine that you’re in a car, and you’re driving behind a truck carrying a bunch of logs. There’s a log on the pile that’s loose, and looks like it might fall off. An autonomous vehicle’s sensors aren’t going to pick up something that hasn’t happened yet but might. You would. If you were driving the car, you’d simply get in another lane, and pass that truck before anything happened.

That’s a lot like being a race car driver (though again, we’re doing all of this at 200 mph). You’re putting yourself in situations or getting yourself out of situations that you see coming. Computers and algorithms can make calculations at lightning fast speeds, but there are still tremendous advantages the human mind has. We can draw on our experience, and in many cases, still process situations faster and more thoughtfully and accurately than an autopilot could.

So that alone seems like a reason why you wouldn’t want to remove the human element from driving completely.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Another big strike against autonomous vehicles is that to some extent, they’re going to have to rely on our country’s infrastructure system to be successful. There are plenty of reasons to think that will be problematic.

The Tesla’s autopilot, for example, relies on sensors being able to read the road. When they do that, they pick up on things like lane markers. They’re affected by the type of pavement you’re driving on. Whenever there’s construction—and I’m not sure what things are like where you live, but there’s always construction going on where I’m at—we put up jersey barriers and yellow cones. Sometimes there aren’t any lines painted on the ground at all because they’re tearing up the pavement. Or there’s fresh pavement, but the lines are all crooked and painted wrong.

THE LIMITS OF TECHNOLOGY

There’s basically two different ways that autonomous cars can “see” the road. There’s a mostly GPS-based model that relies on super detailed mapping, and there’s a mostly camera-based model that actually relies on special cameras and sensors (visual, infrared, etc.) on the cars themselves. Unfortunately, both of these can be messed up pretty easily, and the things that cause them problems are very real, and not easy to fix.

Going back to the infrastructure issue, GPS-based mapping can’t handle changes that occur to roads. So if there’s construction, for example, the car gets thrown. I remember hearing that in one test run of autonomous cars, a car got stuck at a stop sign because it had moved a few feet, and was at odds with the GPS information the car was using. The car read the sign’s new location as an obstruction, and refused to move.

In the same way, cameras stop functioning well when things like weather conditions change. A snow covered road, for example, doesn’t have things on it like lane markers. It basically renders the technology that an autonomous car would rely on essentially useless.

I experienced the limitations of this tech first-hand not that long ago. I drove to Darlington in autonomous mode on a perfectly clear day, and it was a complete disaster. The road I was on for a lot of the drive was a divided highway with u-turns set on the left side of highway at regular intervals, so the lines in the road were drawn differently. Literally every time we passed a u-turn, the car went crazy and tried to pull left. I could not drive the car in the left lane in autonomous mode.

LIABILITY

This is another big question that is really, really tough to answer. If there’s an accident with an autonomous vehicle, who’s at fault? Who’s going to pay the bill for the damages? What happens if the autonomous system doesn’t see something that the average person would have, and someone gets hurt or killed? Would you blame the auto company for not writing a better algorithm?

If there’s a lawsuit every time an autonomous vehicle fails, it seems like it would cripple the industry’s ability to make those cars, and remove a lot of financial incentives to do so.

It’s a tremendous challenge to figure out the liability side of things.

REDUNDANCY

Not that long ago, I had two interesting things happen in vehicles I was traveling in. The autonomous sensors failed in my car, and a part broke in my airplane right in the middle of a flight.

The difference between the two failures added another dimension to why I don’t believe an autonomous vehicle will ever work.

When my airplane broke down, it lost a circuit board that runs the batteries in the plane. But it had two boards. The airplane was able to keep flying. We landed immediately, and got the part repaired. We were able to do that because airplanes are built with a culture of redundancy. The premise behind that is it’s better to be broken down on the ground than in the air, wishing you were on the ground or worse. If you have a redundant system, when one critical system fails, you stop flying, and get to the ground.

Redundant systems are very expensive to build, which is why the automotive industry generally doesn’t build cars with redundancy. For the most part, there is one system of everything in a car: one engine, one battery, one set of controls. Automotive culture is if one thing breaks, hopefully it’s something that you can get fixed easily. You just stop somewhere on the side of the road, call AAA, and move on.

To make autonomous cars truly safe, I think you’d have to introduce at least some level of redundancy in a few different areas. You’d also need costly safety and maintenance checks. That would make cars a lot less affordable, which in turn removes an incentive for building them.

YOUR THOUGHTS

There are a bunch of other issues that come up with autonomous cars that could probably merit their own sections. If computers are running the show, that opens them up to being hacked, and who knows what happens if people are able to take over the controls of autonomous cars. There’s also the reality of American car culture: People still love to drive their cars, and they love to watch their favorite drivers race, too.

But you know what? I could be dead wrong here. Twenty years from now, they might come out with a fully working autonomous vehicle. Yes, I’m a race car driver and somewhat of an expert when it comes to being behind the wheel, but there’s a lot more to this than that. I definitely don’t have all the answers, and quite honestly, I’m just as interested to hear what you think.

So what do you think? Post your thoughts here in the comments on my site, or on Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #DriverlessCarBlog.

The post Fear Not: The Autonomous Car Is A Bust appeared first on BradRacing.com | The Official Web Site of Brad Keselowski www.bk30beta.www.bk30beta.bradracing.com.

Anyone who is a fan of mine knows how highly I regard our soldiers and first responders. I come from a military family, and as I’ve written before, when I win a race and fly the American flag afterward, it’s because of what it means to the people who see it—in particular, our veterans. Maybe it makes people feel good about the fact that they served. Maybe it reminds people of their parents or family members service. Hopefully, anyone who served feels honored by the gesture.

When I fly the flag after a win, it’s to honor our military and first responders.

NASCAR has a long history of honoring veterans. When it was founded in 1948, a lot of the people involved with the sport were former members of the military. Because of all the history, there’s a real connection between the world of racing and the military that’s pretty unique to NASCAR. A lot of the qualities of the military made their way into our sports. Racing teams have to have discipline and follow orders, or bad things can happen. You spend a lot of time traveling from place to place, and the road and your team become your home away from home for a lot of the year.

A PLACE TO CALL HOME

A big difference, though, is that when our veterans come home from their service, they often face new challenges. When I drove for Dale Jr.’s NAVY team, I started meeting with recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, seeing what they’d been through and hearing their stories. And then when I moved to Team Penske, they had a long-standing relationship with the Paralyzed Veterans of America, so I’ve had a chance to interact with that organization as well. It profoundly affected me. The experiences I’ve had with members of our military through my foundation, the Checkered Flag Foundation, have deepened my appreciation for soldiers, and the incredible sacrifices that they and their families make for all of us.

I came to understand that when veterans come home, they really need places that will provide them the support that they need. That’s why I’m excited to talk about a few things that we’re doing this weekend, and beyond.

The Tribute2Veterans Miller Lite No. 2 Ford Fusion features the names of around the entire car.

The first is the Tribute2Veterans, which my foundation did in partnership with Team Penske and Miller Lite to raise money for veterans. Fans and families of service men and women nominated a person that has sacrificed for our country, and each nominee will have their name displayed on the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway. (The same list will actually appear on Chase Briscoe’s No. 29 Checkered Flag Foundation truck in Friday’s race, too.) Afterward, each person will receive a piece of the No. 2 car’s sheet metal that shows their name along with a photo of the car and a letter of thanks. I’m so grateful for everyone who chose to participate, and made the Tribute2Veterans a reality.

Next, we have an announcement about a new partnership with the Fisher House Foundation. Fisher House is best known for a network of comfort homes where military and veterans’ families can stay at no cost while a loved one is receiving treatment. These homes are located at major military and VA medical centers nationwide, close to the medical center or hospital they serve. After I visited a Fisher House in Georgia, I decided that I wanted to help open one in Michigan. To that end, I’ve donated $150,000 to Fisher House to build a location in Ann Arbor.

Finally, I want to talk about my partnership with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), and the Pure Michigan Talent Connect job web site. As a Michigan native, I have a lot of pride in my home state, and the work MEDC and Pure Michigan are doing to help veterans is something I’m especially proud of.

Michigan’s already leading the way in terms of giving veterans a great place to live and raise their families. Grand Rapids was just ranked the second best place to raise a family in the entire country. The state’s got more freshwater coastline than any other state, 650 public golf courses, 1,300 designated mountain bike trails, 102 state parks, 600 campgrounds, four professional sports teams, the University of Michigan (Go Blue!)—you get the picture.

AT A FUNDRAISER FOR THE ANN ARBOR FISHER HOUSE BACK IN JUNE. PHOTO BY DANA JO PHOTOGRAPHY.

What makes Pure Michigan Talent Connect special is that it helps veterans and reserve members find a variety of programs, jobs and businesses designed to match their skills with employers’ needs. In addition, the employers on Pure Michigan Talent Connect not only respect our military, but understand the value of hiring from such an experienced, talented workforce to their shops, factories and offices. You can find the web site at the link below:

https://jobs.mitalent.org/job- seeker/jobsearch-results/245977

And right now, the career opportunities in Michigan are pretty incredible. Currently, Michigan is No. 1 in the U.S. for creating new manufacturing jobs, No. 1 in employment of industrial and mechanical engineers, and No. 3 in high-tech job growth. Not only that—the state has several programs which allow high school graduates in certain areas to pursue post-secondary degrees with up to 100 percent tuition reimbursement or scholarship.

To any veteran out there looking for a place that will look after him or her, that will provide a great place to live and some of the best employment opportunities in the nation, I urge you to consider Michigan.

Finally, to all the veterans we’re honoring this weekend: Thank you for everything you’ve sacrificed for the rest of us to be free. My family and I could not be more proud of all that you do.

The post Honoring Our Veterans appeared first on BradRacing.com | The Official Web Site of Brad Keselowski www.bk30beta.www.bk30beta.bradracing.com.

Dale Jr. is one of a kind, and someone we can all be proud to be associated with. Most competitors aren’t necessarily humble by nature. His humility really set him apart in a lot of ways. He has a massive fanbase, a ton of sponsors, and made a ton of money. But he never bragged about what he had, or what he had accomplished. He’s never been that way. I’ve always really respected him for that.

Dale and I are great friends, and as many of you probably know, he gave me a chance to drive for him in 2007, and that opportunity changed my life.  I was very, very fortunate to drive for him, and to have his help building a career. I don’t know if I’d be where I am without him, but I’m glad I don’t have to find out.

So to honor my friend and everything he’s done for me, we’re going to be racing with the scheme below this weekend, an homage to my days driving the NAVY 88.

The paint scheme I’ll be using this weekend, an homage to the NAVY 88.

When I began my blog, my very first entry was about Dale Jr. and our history together. I’m republishing that blog in its entirety below because it truly captures how I feel about him.

But before we jump in, I want to say this: Dale, there’s not a doubt in my mind that you’ll excel at whatever it is you do next, but it’s not going to be the same out there without you. I’m going to miss racing against you, my friend. I’m going to miss seeing you out there in the 88 on Sundays.

I know I’m not alone.

DALE JR. IS A GOOD FRIEND AND I’LL ALWAYS BE GRATEFUL TO HIM FOR GIVING ME MY BIG BREAK IN RACING.

 

EVERYONE ELSE

Back in 2006 and 2007, I was struggling to really get a foothold in the sport. I’d been through some pretty tough escapades with different race teams, and kind of bounced around. I didn’t have any connections. I didn’t have any possessions. I had no place to live. Sometimes, I stayed in hotel rooms that teams would rent for me for a couple months while I drove for them. Other times, I stayed with friends. Every team that I worked for was broke, and we never had the equipment we needed to run well.

I wasn’t really having much success.

As NASCAR fans know, the way they do the garages at the track, there are two sides: There’s the top 20, and then there’s everybody else. One day in early 2007, when I was racing for Keith Coleman Racing in the Nationwide Series, I was on the “everyone else” side. I’ll never forget looking over at a friend of mine and saying, “My goal is to get to the other side of the garage.”

Later that season, I was down at Atlanta. I ran a truck race, and I ran terrible. But when I got in the Nationwide car, we ran really, really well. There was a part of the race where we undoubtedly were one of the best cars. It just so happened that Dale, who had his car at the time with another driver, was watching the race from his suite at the top of the track.

And I passed his car.

His car had a lot of sponsorships, and a lot of resources dedicated to it. We were struggling very much. But on this particular day, it was quite the opposite. We had very little resources, and we were running well. And I think he was at kind of a breaking point, so he just put that in his mental bank.

MY KEITH COLEMAN RACING RIDE FOR 13 RACES IN 2007.

The next week, we went to Bristol, Tennessee, and Dale, Jr. decided to run the race. He did it with his family team, DEI, but since he didn’t do it on a constant basis and they didn’t have any points, they had to park on the backside of the garage.

We wound up parking right next to each other. You have to remember, he was Dale Jr., and I was this struggling driver, so I didn’t want to bother him. I’m not that kind of guy — it just didn’t feel right. The funny thing was that he got out, walked over, and talked to me a little bit while we were practicing, which I thought was great. He was just down to earth. I was running really well again, and the first thing he said was that he liked the way I was driving. He said I reminded him, at least at that track, of how his dad used to drive it.

I thought that was really cool.

He also told me, “Man I’d like to see you get an opportunity. It would be great. I wish I knew of one.”  And then we kind of just moved on. It was one of those kind of “nice to meet you” situations.

A CHANCE

I struggled on for the next few months, and so did Dale and his team. By early June, the Nationwide team I was driving for — Keith Coleman Racing — went bankrupt.

I saw the writing on the wall once the season started, so I can’t say I was surprised. It was like one of those countdown clocks. I knew it was coming. I’m not going to say that it didn’t hurt, but when you’re prepared for something, it doesn’t hurt as much.

I began looking for another opportunity. Something. Anything.

I started spotting for someone, and I went to a truck race in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — just to watch because it’s close to where I live in Michigan, only a five or six-hour drive. There was this big wreck. One of the drivers lost his temper and had a tantrum, and he intentionally wrecked another driver. At that time, it was a big faux pas in racing. (It’s funny how times change. It seems like that happens now two or three times a year.) So NASCAR booted him out, and sat him down.

Like I said, I had been at that race just watching. The team driver for the guy who had gotten in trouble — he’d seen me drive before, and he had said the same thing to me that Dale had: “If there’s ever an opportunity, I’ll be there for you.” You sometimes think those words are lip service when you hear them. You never really know. Well, sure enough, there was an opportunity, and he made the most of his word. His team, Germain Racing, called and asked me to drive that truck while the other driver was suspended. That driver was only suspended for one week, so essentially, I had a one week trial.

That race was in Memphis, Tennessee, in June of 2007. It turned out to be one of those unique weekends where the stars align in a lot of different ways.

Dale’s Nationwide team, like I said, had been struggling. So he had a sit down with his driver, and told him, “Look, no more wrecking. I don’t care what you have to do, no more wrecking.” The same weekend I was driving in Memphis, Dale showed up in New Hampshire to watch his car run, and when he got there, they had wrecked at practice. He made the decision right then and there that he was going to fire his driver.

The responsibility, the pressure of being with a well-funded team — especially one that’s owned by the most popular guy in the sport — those things kind of hit you like a truck.

The night I ran the truck race for the suspended driver, it went well. I had qualified us on the pole. I was running really well and was winning the race until I was wrecked from behind late. As Dale later told it to me, he was actually watching the race on TV. He needed a driver for his car, he saw me, and he thought, “This is easy. Let’s put him in.”

He called me up the next day when I was flying back to Michigan. “I’d like you to drive my car,” he said. “Come on down here and check it out.” “

So I did.

I brought a suitcase and that was it. A suitcase on a plane. I landed in North Carolina, and there was a gentleman picking me up. His name was T.J. Majors, one of Dale’s best friends. He’d turn out to be my best friend. (He’s now Dale Jr.’s spotter, and he spotted for me in the Nationwide Series as well.) T.J. took me over to Dale Jr.’s guest house, and that was where I stayed for the next six months.

It was a surreal thing to go through. There were a lot of benefits, obviously, to driving the No. 88 for Dale, and having resources and opportunities that you’ve never had before to be competitive. But you start to realize quite quickly that there’s other things that come with it. The responsibility, the pressure of being with a well-funded team — especially one that’s owned by the most popular guy in the sport — those things kind of hit you like a truck. You think it’s just going to be easy. “Now we’ve got a fast car, and we’ll win.” But then other things pop up to make it difficult. The pressure was to run well, not wreck and to be a leader on a team that needed one — that’s really hard to take up overnight.

JOINING JR. MOTORSPORTS AND GETTING TO RUN THE 88 CHANGED EVERYTHING FOR ME.

Things came together for me in Texas at the very end of 2007. The team had built a brand new car. We started at the back because of some kind of issue they had getting through tech, so I had to drive through the field, which was kind of one of those things that sticks out as being a huge accomplishment. I finished sixth. That was the first time we really ran well. I was very proud of that one. I think the team really rallied behind me.

BURN THE SHIPS

There’s a story about the explorer, Cortes, that comes to mind when I think of my early career. When Cortes sailed to the New World, he came with a bunch of ships. And when he landed, he burned them all so that nobody could go back. Nobody could talk about leaving. Nobody could think about leaving. They were committed to what they were doing whether they believed in it or not. They didn’t have a choice.

That’s kind of where I was at with racing back in 2007 before meeting Dale, I wouldn’t say I didn’t believe in myself. But I would say that I didn’t have a choice but to make it.

In my mind, there was no other option.

The post A Tribute to Dale Jr. appeared first on BradRacing.com | The Official Web Site of Brad Keselowski www.bk30beta.www.bk30beta.bradracing.com.

From an emotional standpoint, there aren’t a lot of things in motorsports that have meant more to me than BKR. The truck team operation started in 2007 with Robb Brent, a local racer from where I’m from in Michigan. My family’s truck team had just gone out of business, so I helped him run a few ARCA and truck races, and my uncle—who also ran in the truck series—helped us out, too. By 2011, we had grown into a full-time operation, and we continued in the Camping World Truck Series with our first full-time driver, Parker Kligerman, which was great.

But this, our seventh year competing full time, will be our last for the foreseeable future. That doesn’t mean I’m done being an owner for the rest of my life. It is my goal to continue to have a deeper role in the sport. I’ve been afforded some different opportunities to do that, whether it be as a member of driver councils, or roles that I have picked up within Penske.

I can’t explain every reason why I’ve made this decision, but I want to talk a little more about the thinking behind it. I also want to share some of my experiences running BKR, to express my gratitude toward everyone who’s made BKR possible, and to give you a little glimpse into what’s coming next.

WHY NOW

Like I said, this was a really hard decision to make. I’ve anguished over it for probably the last four or five months. In the end, there just were a lot of factors that, taken together, made it difficult for me to continue to operate a team in the truck series.

My contract with Team Penske and the process related to it were definitely a consideration. It is tougher to get deals done now, and it’s only going to get harder. I’m no longer a driver who’s just starting out, and as I get older, it’s more difficult to justify losing money, especially as I look toward the future.

Along those lines, some of you may be wondering whether the new NASCAR rules about how many races a driver could run played a part in this. It wasn’t connected to that at all.

MEMORIES

One of the hardest parts of closing BKR is saying goodbye to everything we’ve accomplished. There’s so much I’m proud of. The first few years I owned the truck team, I didn’t have a job with another team as a driver, so being part of it gave me a lot of meaningful experience on the track and off it. We were able to generate enough revenue to open the BKR shop. That was a big highlight for us. Being able to buy back my parents’ old race team hauler and use it—that meant a lot to me, too. I’m also incredibly grateful to our sponsors. In particular, Cooper Standard and Draw Tite/Reese have been a tremendous part of our success, and I thank them for being there for us.

Above everything, I’m proudest of all the people we helped in their careers. There are tire changers who started with us—and had never changed a tire before—who are now in the Cup series. The same goes for our drivers. Being able to help Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick and Daniel Hemric to reach the Xfinity series makes me feel like we’ve been doing our part to give back to the sport.

Then, of course, there were the on-track wins. Watching Ryan get us our first-ever win in Iowa in 2012 was special. Getting my first truck series win in 2014 at Bristol was pretty great, too. I’d never been able to get it together behind the wheel of a truck, and I finally did. When Tyler won at Daytona in 2015, that was really, really cool. That was the first measurable level of success anyone in my family had ever had at Daytona. It meant a lot. So did Joey Logano’s win later that season at Martinsville. And then we had that one-two finish last year in Las Vegas with Tyler and Daniel, and that was a real indicator of just how far we’d come.

As an owner, I’ll miss a lot of things. I like having a role in the garage, and it’s a really different feeling watching something you own race versus driving it. There is a deeper connection to the people. When you’re driving, you’re focused on, “How do I get the most out of this car?” When you’re the owner, you are focused on, “How do I get the most out of these people, and this structure, and this leadership role?” It’s just two different worlds. Of course, being an owner has helped me as a driver in a lot of ways, too. It’s definitely made me a lot more understanding with everyone I work with.

Finally, this decision really hits home for me personally because, for the first time in a long while, the Keselowski name won’t be part of the truck series. I’m bummed about that for myself and for my family.

WHAT’S NEXT

As far as the BKR facility goes, it’s going to play a key role in a new business endeavor I’m planning to undertake. I’m not ready to announce what we’re doing, but I’m a big believer in manufacturing, especially advanced manufacturing. We’re looking at developing a new technology that will be relevant to motorsports, and to the broader marketplace, too. Stay tuned.

If I’m able to do what I want successfully, it will give me a pathway back to being an owner. One of the things I’ve learned from Roger Penske is the importance of having a successful core business outside of motorsports. If you have a successful business venture outside of motorsports, you can kind of roll with the ebbs and flows of the sport as an owner. That’s the position I want to be in, and that I’ll need to be in to be an owner who lasts in NASCAR.

As we close the doors of BKR, one of the things that is really important to me is helping our employees find new jobs. With that in mind, we’re going to transition a number of the employees in different of ways. Some of them may go to Team Penske as part of the team for Ryan Blaney’s new car, and I’m really excited for those guys. They’ve got an incredible opportunity. Some of our other workers are going to stay with me in other roles. My hope is that everyone will land smoothly in their next job, whatever that turns out to be.

I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who helped make BKR a success. It was a dream come true, and I’m glad it was something we could share together. I don’t know where the road is going to take us next, but this is only a stop. There will be other destinations in motorsports to come. My journey as an owner is just beginning.

The post Saying Goodbye appeared first on BradRacing.com | The Official Web Site of Brad Keselowski www.bk30beta.www.bk30beta.bradracing.com.

(If you’re a fan of the 2 who was waiting for this to happen to buy your merch or get your new tattoos, you can breath a sign of relief. )

If it was just about me, I think it’s something that would have been done six months earlier. But I’m a big believer that a race car driver is kind of like a quarterback for a football team. He’s the foundation, but he’s only one piece. So if it was going to take until January or February to make sure I’d have the rest of my team moving ahead, that was fine with me.

Paul Wolfe and I have been together the second longest of any driver-crew chief pairing. We’re second only to Chad Knaus and Jimmie Johnson. That’s something we’re proud of, and we want to build off that.

Continuing to build something at Team Penske was another big part of it. To put it into the most basic terms, it’s kind of like building a house. We’ve made some great progress so far. Sure, it’s human nature to look around, and take a look at your neighbors’ houses. Maybe there are some with patches of grass that look better from a distance. Maybe there are others that look a little worse. I like our house. I was very interested in just sticking around and watering my own grass.

I’m looking forward to getting more of these with Team Penske.

One of the other benefits of continuing with Team Penske is that I can continue my pursuit of the team’s all-time record for races won. Right now, I’m eight victories behind Mark Donohue. Team Penske has been around for 50 years, and to have the most wins would be like having the most home runs for the Yankees. That is something I want to see come to fruition. It was a big deal for me personally, and it really factored into my decision to stay.

With Dale retiring, there was a lot of speculation that I might be taking over the 88. I never had any conversations or talks with anyone about it, but I always assumed that the possibility was there. I could see how it would make sense to fans, too. I drove for Dale in the past, so there’s a relationship and a legacy that goes along with that. And the 88 car is an elite ride. There’s a deep connection that the 88 has had and is going to have with fans, and I think anyone would have been proud to extend that history in some small way.

But at the end of the day, remaining loyal to Roger Penske was important to me, and the opportunity with Team Penske outweighed the opportunity to take over for Dale. There are a lot of reasons I’ve loved being with Team Penske, but one of the biggest ones—beyond Roger’s legacy and all of that—is that he is the type of guy who always does what he said he would do.

That means a lot to me.

I’m proud to be with the team I’m with. We have one of the strongest programs in NASCAR. We’ve won races every year we’ve been together. With Team Penske and Ford behind me, I know we’ll have a shot at more championships.

So let’s go get one.

The post My Return to Team Penske appeared first on BradRacing.com | The Official Web Site of Brad Keselowski www.bk30beta.www.bk30beta.bradracing.com.

I’ve thought a lot about the discussion that followed, and there was something about all of it that left me feeling like everyone—myself included—had somehow missed an opportunity where we could all have learned something. I want to dig deeper and think bigger with this blog.

Today, I want to use that event as a reason to take a look at the larger picture, to think about more than just drivers and racing. I want to talk about how we talk to and about each other, and to think a bit about the kind of world we all want to live in. Because the more I think about it, the more I believe that there has to be a better way than what we have now.

HOW WE ARE

In our sport, every driver is going to have some low lights. It’s just part of it. Every driver has done something he’s not proud of. Some have done a good job of burying or hiding it, and that’s okay. But most have not, myself included.

I can think of some incidents I wish I’d handled better.

The first was a couple weekends back at Kentucky. In the heat of the moment, I lost my cool. I was frustrated, but I think we can all agree that there were many other channels I could have used to deal with my frustration.

Another one that comes to mind is my dust-up with Jeff Gordon at the 2014 Texas AAA 500. There were some driving moves I made that I still believe were the right ones. Still, I could have tried a little bit harder to talk to Jeff afterward. Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference, but I regret not having the humility to walk up to him and say, “I hated that that happened to you. I didn’t want it to happen.”

The point I’m trying to make is that athletes are human. We have plenty of faults. And if you don’t think that someone you’re a fan of is fallible, or has made mistakes, or has had issues, you’re fooling yourself.

The challenge for all of us—athletes, media and fans—is how we choose to digest the frailties we see. In some ways, how we react to our heroes’ shortcomings says as much about us and the time in which we live in as it does about them.

The truth is that the degree of access that we have to our heroes has really transformed the way that we see and interact with them. Consider John F. Kennedy for a minute. He was a fairly popular president, but during his time, no one knew that he had a lot of extracurricular activities going on in his personal life. How would that have affected how people felt about him? I think it’s pretty safe to say it would have changed the way they felt pretty fairly adversely.

Our fans are left with a dilemma. It used to be that we never knew about the faults of our heroes. Now, it seems like that’s all we know. It’s easier to pick up a paper and find out that your favorite star has a substance abuse problem, or said something offensive, or had an unkind moment with a fan than it is to find out about the good deeds they’ve done. With social media, you find out about those kinds of things in real time.

That can make it a very challenging environment to be a fan.

It’s natural and important to sometimes privately judge each other. We make decisions—who we’re going to be around, who we’re going to support, who we love, who we don’t love—based on the information we get access to.

But when all we react to are sensational or negative headlines, it creates an environment that feels toxic. We take sides. Who’s right becomes more important than what’s right.

THE SIN AND THE SINNER

My mother-in-law has a saying that she says all the time: “Hate the sin, not the sinner.”

It’s a simple way of saying two things. First, it’s okay to like someone who isn’t perfect because none of us are. And second, it’s also okay to dislike things that the same person might have done wrong.

That seems like something that’s really tough for people to distinguish, especially in the age of social media. Because for some reason, most people are stuck in one of two places.

They either hate something a person does wrong, and write the person off, too. Or they support a person and back everything he or she does—even if it’s wrong.

It’s easy to jump on the hate the sin and the sinner bandwagon. Somebody does something we disapprove of, and we decide right then and there that they’re awful, too. We’re all guilty of that from time to time.

It’s also easy to excuse the bad behavior of someone you support because you’re a fan. But you can’t give people a hall pass for doing things that aren’t right. I can say, “Hey. When I was five years old, I stole a pack of gum. I’m a good person now. I’ve done enough to make up for that.” That might very well be true, but we can also agree that stealing gum still isn’t okay. Believing in someone doesn’t mean that we stop holding that person accountable, or using common sense.

So where’s the middle ground? Maybe it’s that one bad act shouldn’t define us, especially since most of us are defined by much more than any single thing we do.

Danica Patrick had a well-publicized incident at Pocono that speaks to what I’m getting at. After some fans booed her, she stopped and basically chewed them out for it. It was caught on camera, and it went viral.

Danica later apologized, and explained that moments before the whole deal went down, security had restrained and removed a fan who came at her in a rush. Now that may not excuse how she handled things, but she definitely didn’t deserve what happened, which was that people were talking about her on social media like she was the worst person in the world.

That’s wrong, too.

As fans, as athletes, as members of the media, we’re all being faced with a real challenge. We know and see more about each other than ever before. But what are we going to do with all that newfound knowledge and information? Is this the way we want our world to be?

And if not, how do we change the way we interact with each other for the better?

Hopefully, we can find a way to be strong enough to identify our own weaknesses and faults, and tolerant enough to forgive others for having them, too. As of now, though, we’re not there yet.

I’m curious to hear what you think.

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It wasn’t the first time I’d done that. A few years before, I’d done a similar thing with Miller a few times, and it was always kind of fun. There were no cameras there or anything. It was just, “Hey, let’s go do this.”

What made our journey at Watkins Glen a little different was that we decided to film it on Facebook Live. At the time, I’d been trying out Facebook Live a little bit, and thought it might be fun to go out and meet some fans, and share the experience of what that was like.

Since then, we’ve done quite a few of these Facebook Lives on race weekends, and they’ve been great. Today, I want to spend this blog entry explaining why I do them, and sharing what I’ve learned about our fans from doing them. (And in case you were wondering, this isn’t some sort of paid ad for Facebook.) I want to pass along why these experiences have meant so much to me, and why I think they’re important for me to keep doing.

GOING LIVE

I’m always looking for ways to engage our fans. I’ve done blogs in the past where I’ve talked about why I’m not the biggest autograph fan—I understand that to some people, an autograph is the Holy Grail, but it’s not to me.

When I thought about what kind of experience would be relatable to me if I was a fan camping at a race track—well, that’s the question I started with, and I kind of moved forward from there. That’s how we wound up at Facebook Live.

I would say probably two-thirds of the race weekends, I do an appearance that fans are invited to, but not every weekend. I realize that there are some shortfalls in terms of fans having access. So Facebook Live felt like a really good fit. It was a way to make sure that I felt able to meet with race fans each and every weekend, and show the gratitude I have for them, and everything they do.

I’m so thankful to all the 2 Crew fans for their support, I wanted a way to show my appreciation.

Most of the time, when it comes to driving out to the campgrounds, we don’t have a plan. Practice is over early, or we’re going to go out to dinner, or we just got back for dinner and it’s still early enough. It’s pretty much as simple as saying, ”Let’s go do something fun and cool.” It’s actually more fun to head out without a plan, and just do it to do it.

Paige is my cameraman, and in the beginning, she was very, very nervous about holding the camera the wrong way, that kind of thing. But she’s gotten a lot more confident as we’ve gone along, and I think she’s enjoying it, too. People want to talk to her, of course, and that’s been fun and interesting to see. I think it’s cool to have her filming it instead of someone else. It feels a little bit more personal to our family.

When we started, we would ride through the campgrounds, and it was a little bit easier to be incognito. That’s the one thing that’s changed since the beginning. People are starting to catch on. Now fans kind of know that we might be out, so they’re on the lookout, sending me tweets to visit on social media, which is fine. Now we have to find more clever ways to disguise ourselves, and scout things out to find the fans who are showing their support for the 2 Team.

It’s important to me that we always stop at someone’s camp who has our stuff hanging up. I want it to be about fans that support us. I want to be able to give back to them and show them that we care. One of the best parts of the whole deal is having it be a surprise when we show up, and so far, it’s been a surprise to each and every person.

Great fans we met at a Daytona FB Live.

Another great part is joining fans when they’re enjoying themselves, and simply being part of it. At one of our visits in Daytona, quite a few of the guys and girls had been having a good time, and it’s possible they might not have been completely sober. Those are always kind of fun because people really let their personality show. There was another time—also in Daytona—where a guy got super excited, and started swearing a lot. I definitely appreciated how excited he was, but I was a little bit nervous about all the swearing online.

Of course, any time someone gets excited in general, it’s great. If you have a chance to make someone’s day and you’re able to do it, it’s a good feeling. It kind of makes my day, too.

More recently, we had a chance to bring Scarlett with us for the first time. That wasn’t exactly planned, either. We didn’t have a babysitter! It was so sunny and bright out, and Scarlett had already taken her nap, so she was in a decent mood. So we figured, “Yeah. Let’s see how it goes.” I think she did great.

WHAT I’VE LEARNED

I’ve learned a lot of things from doing these Facebook Lives. One of the most surprising is how many of our fans are from Canada. I don’t know if that’s just my demographics or what, but even at our past Facebook Live at Richmond, there was a #2Crew group from Canada.

If I had to pick the biggest takeaway from doing Facebook Live, though, it would have to be the sense of perspective I’ve gotten. I’ll explain what I mean.

When I’m at a racetrack, I’m there to win. My job is to perform. I’m not getting paid to have a good time. What’s going through my head are things like, “How do I get in the corner better? How do I make my car not so loose off? What can I do to get in the pit stall a little better, so the pit crew has a great day?” That’s how we, as drivers, frame a weekend.

Because of that, it’s very, very easy for us—and by “us,” I mean all drivers—to lose sight of what’s really going on. And what’s really going on at these races is a lot bigger than our competition.

For fans, a race weekend is much more than a race. When you see people in the campground, they’re sometimes there for three straight days. The racing only takes up maybe four or five hours of that time. They’re there to have an experience with their families. They’re there to have an experience with their friends. A race weekend is thousands and thousands of people all coming together for a very unique event, sharing something special, and maybe forgetting their troubles for a while.

It reminds me of this great Saturday Night Live Family Feud skit from around the Super Bowl. The skit has people who support the Falcons and Patriots facing off against each other. When asked to name one thing she’d bring to a Super Bowl party, Tom Brady’s wife, Gisele, says, “The beautiful spirit of togetherness that makes all of us part of the tapestry of humanity.” Thanks to her teammate Bill Belichik, who’s hacked the computer scoreboard, it’s the number one answer.

Funny enough, that’s exactly what I like most about seeing people come together for a race, and enjoy a weekend of fun. The campground visits are a chance for me to see things in a broader perspective that’s more than just a driver’s view, more than just a competitor’s view.

Finally, it’s also a chance to get to know the people who support me, and show how much I value their support. In any business, having a personal touch to what you do seems like a pretty good idea. It’s kind of like the guy that owns one restaurant and knows every one of his customers, versus the guy who owns a chain and never sees his customers.

I’m never going to be able to get to the 50,000 or 70,000 fans who show up for a race weekend. I’m never going to be able to sign an autograph for everyone. I’m never going to be able to meet everyone of them at a trailer and give them a case a beer. But if I can do it for one, or two, or three, and show people that I care, and that it could be them, I think that’s a good thing.

Now some of you reading this might be wondering: What is it exactly that I’m looking for when we visit a campground? What makes us stop? How do we decide which fans we visit with on Facebook Live?

It’s more of an art than a science, really, but I will say this: A couple of weeks ago, we saw someone flying an American flag above their campground, and right below it, a flag with the 2 on it. Now I’m not saying I’m Batman, but when I saw that—that American flag/2 flag combo—it was pretty much like someone putting out the Bat Signal to me.

So get your flags out, and fly them high. We’ll be on the lookout soon at a track near you…

THE VIDEOS

Please note that each of these Facebook Live videos was filmed live. Some of them contain content that is not suitable for minors.

WATKINS GLEN, AUGUST 4, 2016

BRISTOL, AUGUST 20, 2016

DAYTONA, FEBRUARY 18, 2017

DAYTONA, FEBRUARY 20, 2017

DAYTONA, FEBRUARY 23, 2017

LAS VEGAS, MARCH 10, 2017

TEXAS, APRIL 8, 2017

RICHMOND, APRIL 29, 2017

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Before we jump in, I should say that I was actually part of the exploratory group that helped come up with these changes. It was made up of 15 or so people, all representatives from different branches of the sport—drivers, team directors, tracks, media, and of course, NASCAR. All of us were faced with the same question: What do we need to do to allow the sport to thrive in the future?

For me, the new changes are a big step in the right direction. I’ll explain why.

CHALLENGES WE FACE

To point NASCAR toward a future that makes sense, we had to be honest about where things are for us as a sport. They’re pretty good, but we have a lot of challenges that we can’t ignore if we want to not only stay relevant, but grow.

For a long time, NASCAR used to be easily the largest spectator sport. With 36 races a year averaging 100,000 in attendance, NASCAR was putting up massive numbers. That’s really changed—not just for NASCAR, but across the sports world. You’re seeing smaller arenas get built because fans want a more intimate experience, and the viewing experience at home is pretty high-quality. Spectator sports are not as strong as they used to be.

Not having as many fans at races creates a whole other challenge for our sport, primarily because seeing a race in person used to be a big way to draw new people in. If you go to a track and hear the roar of an engine, or see a car going so fast it looks like it’s vibrating, your brain connects to racing in a way it can’t from watching TV. You might watch the next race from home, but after being at a race, you know what you’re looking at in a different way.

Without that, you miss out on that sense of speed. You can’t convey on TV what it takes to be a talented race car driver.

There are other challenges that we face at the tracks, too. The coming generation of fans aren’t working in factories the way the generation before them did. They’re much more noise-sensitive, and watching a race in person can be a bit shocking if you’re not used to noise. They’re also not as car-crazy as their parents and grandparents once were. “The car is the star” used to be one of our easiest parts to convey to the sport and its fans.

Finally, there’s more competition in the sports world than ever before. Finding a way to connect to millennials in general is tough. You can play soccer, baseball, basketball and football in elementary school. You can play a lot of that stuff. You can’t play racing.

LIVE SPORTS REIGN SUPREME

But the biggest shift across the entire sports landscape has been in spectator sports shown live on TV. Of the 100 most-viewed shows last year, 88 of them were live sporting events.

Yes, there’s still sitcoms and all that, but 10 or 15 years ago, the biggest TV shows were shows like Seinfeld or Survivor. That’s not happening anymore.

The biggest shows now are things like Football Night in America. They’re spectator sports on TV, live sporting events. So that’s really changed the dynamics. And while our spectatorship has gone down and our TV numbers haven’t necessarily gone up, the value per person to advertisers has gone up dramatically. If I’m an advertiser who wants to advertise on TV today and I want to reach an audience where people are going to be watching, I’m buying a sporting event.

As a result, NASCAR—and all sports—are able to demand rights fees that are higher than ever. Back in the 1990s, somewhere around 10 million people watched the broadcast of the Daytona 500. The rights fees were around a couple million dollars. Well, about the same amount of people watched it last year, but the rights fees for Daytona were worth about $100 million.

Because TV is able to afford higher rights fees, instead of catering to on-site spectators the way sports did 30 or 40 years ago, sports are catering to TV. That’s how sports are being consumed. That’s where the money is.

THE CHANGES

Everything I just described is why NASCAR is in the position we’re in. To continue to thrive, the sport needs to be more TV-friendly than ever before.

So it’s being changed in that way.

As was announced Monday, we’re essentially going to put TV timeouts into motorsports. But the way NASCAR is going to do it, to me, is going improve the sport in a number of ways.

Each race will be divided into three parts: two stages and the finish. The top driver for the first two stages—which will basically provide the TV timeouts—will be awarded a stage win and one playoff point, while the race winner earns five playoff points, which will carry over to the postseason, adding a whole new incentive to races. Additionally, the Top 10 finishers for each stage will earn additional championship points.

If you win both stages and the race itself, you’ll wind up with the equivalent of a hat trick or a perfect game, with 40-odd points for the race win, and another 20 to 30 for the stage wins. Maybe NASCAR can have a contest to see what winning two or three of the three race stages will be called.

It’s going to be a huge change, and what I like about it is that it gives us more moments within each race to care about. Right now, you can fall asleep early in the race, wake up at the end and see the ending, and if you only care about who won, guess what: You saw everything you needed to see. You saw the end, the only moment that mattered.

That doesn’t work. We need fans to want to watch the entire race, and now, they’ll have really clear reasons to do that.

As a driver, I like it, too. Every top driver has had races they’ve led for hundreds of laps, only to have a questionable caution come out late in the race and change the outcome. Before, if I was a race leader and debris caution came out of nowhere, all I was thinking was, “Man, what was the point of racing so damn hard? It didn’t mean anything.”

Now, it’ll mean something more, because I’ll have won at least one stage, maybe two.

It will give fantasy racing fans more to care about, too. With live scoring, people’s fantasy racing teams will be picking up points as the race goes on. Especially for the next generation of fans, who have so much competing for their attention, this change is a positive one. It gives them reasons to keep paying attention.

Finally, stage  scoring will also make NASCAR the first motorsport to showcase live scoring instead of being scored solely off the finish, which is a nice point of distinction.

The other big change that goes hand-in-hand with stages is that all playoff points won during the regular season will carry over throughout the postseason. So instead of having everyone’s point totals reset when the playoffs begin, stage and race winners will have the extra bonus of keeping those points throughout each stage of the playoffs, all the way to Homestead.

I love this, too. It makes winning during the year worth more throughout the entire season, and can prevent top contenders from being knocked out of contention by one blown engine during a critical playoff race.

Now, we have to be careful about our core fan. We don’t want to alienate our diehards, who already appreciate all of the different dimensions of NASCAR, and don’t feel like they need anything new.

For those people, TV timeouts might feel like a bit of a tough sell, and I get that.

At the same time, they won’t be too long, and what we lose for those pre-scheduled breaks in the action, we’ll gain in live action that actually means something. Hopefully, we’ll see fewer eyebrow-raising cautions in the final minutes of races, and the stage additions will just keep everything flowing.

But I’m curious to know what all of you think about these changes. Do they sound like improvements to you? Would you rather have things stay the way they are? Post your comments here or on social media with the hashtag #NASCARChanges. Let me hear what you have to say!

(If you want to read up on the changes, here’s the official post from NASCAR.)

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That’s my first memory of being a Lions fan: Watching them play on Thanksgiving day. It was a pretty big deal for my family, and really, for anyone who lived in the Detroit area. We all loved watching, and when the Lions didn’t have success, making fun of them became a pastime, too.

Mainly, though, the team brought us all together. My brother, Brian, and I have a unique relationship in so many ways. I’m a Michigan fan. He’s a Michigan State fan. You get the idea. But one of the few areas where we overlap is when it comes to rooting for the Lions. We’ve gone to a couple of Thanksgiving games together.

This year, we’ve had a pretty good season so far. So while the getting is good, I wanted to talk about my love for the Lions, and why I’m optimistic about what’s to come.

BARRY & HEARTBREAK

When you tell people you’re a Detroit Lions fan, they give you that sideways look like, “Why would you do that to yourself?”

For me, the answer started with two words: Barry Sanders.

Man, did I love Barry. He made so many amazing plays, but what I also liked about him was that he was so quiet and humble. When he played for Detroit, Barry actually lived in the town where I’m from, Rochester Hills. That was kind of cool. I never saw him around town, but a few of my friends did.

Back then, the Lions played in Pontiac, Michigan, and Pontiac is literally right next to the area where I grew up. You could see the stadium from my dad’s race shop. It was practically across the street—we could actually watch the players practice from there.

As I got older, I began to understand that heartbreak and Detroit football went hand-in-hand.

In 2000, the Lions looked like they were going to make the playoffs easily, but toward the end of the season, they kind of unraveled, and lost two or three games in a row. Everything came down to the last game of the regular season against the Chicago Bears, and the Lions had to win it. The Bears were 5-11, a terrible team with nothing to play for. We lost by a field goal. I’ll never forget it, because as the ball was kicked, the announcer said, “Here it is, the Lions season, up in the air. And there it is. It’s over.” The next few days on the radio, they just lambasted the whole team. Everyone got fired.

Then there was the last Thanksgiving game I went to, back in 2012, when the Lions played the Houston Texans. In the third quarter, Houston’s Justin Forsett ran for a touchdown, but he had clearly been down. Our coach, Jim Schwartz, threw a challenge flag, but the rule was that every scoring play was reviewed automatically. So it wasn’t a situation that he could even challenge. That would have been fine except there were two other rules. First, if you threw a challenge flag when you weren’t supposed to, it was a foul. And second, if a team committed a foul like throwing the challenge flag when you weren’t supposed to and it delayed the following snap, the officials weren’t allowed to use replay to review a play. You can’t make this stuff up, right? Houston wound up winning by a touchdown in overtime, and the fans were pissed. It was another instance of having that perpetual feeling of, “Man, the world is against us.”

But the absolute worst day in my life as a Lions fan was when we found out that Barry Sanders had retired. That really hit everybody hard. I remember the community being like, “Oh, my God. This is the end of everything.” Every Lions fan.

(Then the Matt Millen era became a reality, and that was even worse.)

THE CARDIAC CATS

If Barry was the guy who made me a Lions fan, Calvin Johnson was the guy who got me excited about watching them again. I was a huge, huge Calvin Johnson fan. He was a lot like Barry in terms of his personality. He didn’t need to be showy. He just delivered results again and again and again. I’ve always had a lot of respect for that. It’s funny that the two superstars in our history have had these same kinds of personalities. They were the perfect fit for a hard-working town like Detroit.

Can you imagine what we’d be like this year if we had Calvin, too?

This year’s team has been unbelievable. I know that Cardiac Cats is a stolen nickname, but how many games have the Lions won on the final drive? They’ve had eight fourth-quarter comebacks, which apparently is the most in the NFL since 1950, maybe ever. What’s so amazing about it is that it’s kind of the antithesis of what they’ve been known for, which is playing well until the end, and then giving it up.

I’ve been so impressed with Matthew Stafford, and honestly, I really didn’t know how to place him among the league’s quarterbacks before this season. But he’s shown incredible heart and desire this year, more than I remember him showing before. He’s been running the ball and giving up his body when plays break down. The way he’s stepped up and led this team is something I didn’t see coming, and it’s awesome.

The team’s still got some really tough games in front of them: New York, Dallas and Green Bay. But we’ve got a two-game lead, so that’s good. We’ve been here before, but they probably only need to win one game to win the division. That’s not going to be easy to do, but for the first time in a long while, I think we can do it.

There’s definitely a lot to be optimistic about as a fan. Because of the team’s relationship with Ford, I’ve been able to get to know the team’s new general manager, Bob Quinn. He’s a huge race fan, and he and I have a kind of ongoing dialog, which is really cool. He’s a really good guy, and it’s been fun to see their success, and have somebody you can kind of relate to.

Because of my own schedule, I haven’t gone to see the team as much as I would have liked, but I did have a chance to go to training camp back in 2015. At the time, Golden Tate had asked me about one of Ford’s new Mustangs, and what it would take to get a racing model. “Win the Super Bowl,” I said, “and I’ll make a call to Bill Ford for you!” I think I even told him I’d pay for it.

Golden, that offer still stands.

WHEN LIONS WIN

One of the great things about the Lions’ success this season has been the impact on Detroit. Strangely enough, even though it’s the home of the automobile, Detroit’s not a racing town. It’s a football town and hockey town. You think of baseball too, but it’s definitely a very football-based area. Whenever they have any measurable success, you start seeing Lions banners up on the sides of warehouses and stuff like that. When the Lions are successful, the town just really embraces them. It moves the needle, more so than for any other sport.

The idea of the Lions reaching the Super Bowl actually has had some pretty far reaching implications, especially in my house.

Last year, when the Carolina Panthers reached the Super Bowl, my fiancee Paige wanted to go.

“Nah, I don’t really want to go,” I told her at the time. “We’ve been traveling all year. Besides, I’ve been to the Super Bowl once before. There’s a lot of people there. I can tell you what to expect before you even go there.”

Basically, I really undersold it to her. Instead, we agreed to have a house party for the game, which was great.

But after Detroit again won this week, Paige asked, “Now, if the Lions go to the Super Bowl, we’re not going, are we?”

“Wow,” I said. “I don’t know.”

“We couldn’t go last year for the Panthers,” Paige said. “So we can’t go this year for the Lions!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “First off, they’ve got to make it. But second off, it’s a once in a lifetime thing.”

She gave me a look.

“We’ll figure it out when we get there,” I told her.

But at least one of us, maybe both, knew that wasn’t true. Go Lions.

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