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.

The post THE FAULT IN OUR STARS appeared first on BradRacing.com | The Official Web Site of Brad Keselowski www.bk30beta.www.bk30beta.bradracing.com.