Brad Keselowski Is a Constant

 I was never a great student in science class, but I vaguely recall the theory behind scientific experiments. The main thing I remember is that in any experiment a scientist has what’s called a constant and introduces different scenarios called variables to see how the outcome differs.

 In NASCAR over the last two years we’ve seen a series of misfortunate incidents that have brought a few drivers under scrutiny. If this were an experiment the only constant in between the scenarios is Brad Keselowski. Brad and Denny, Brad and Kyle, Brad and Carl, etc etc.

 It seems like every time Brad is being pressured by a driver who is much faster than him an incident happens. Once the incident happens he is retaliated against and doesn’t take it well. Take tonight’s Nationwide series race for example. While initially claiming it was hard racing, Brad went further to say that Kyle took advantage of the fact that he was on probation. I don’t think that this is true in the slightest. Kyle put a flawless slide job on Brad and that didn’t seem to sit well. Most of the time when a driver performs a slide job they lose speed coming out of the turn. This was the case tonight. Instead of moving down and putting a crossover on Kyle, Brad just ran into the back of him.

 In each situation has resulted in retaliation against Brad, which has been heavily scrutinized. It always seems that Brad forgets to check up, drives it a little too deep into the turn, or moves up when he isn’t clear, resulting in contact with a driver who is trying to pass or has just passed him. It seems like the announcers always put it off as an accident and scrutinize the driver who was ran into when they retaliate.

 There has to be a point when these announcers realize that either this is intentional or Brad is just a really bad driver. I doubt it is the latter, as Brad performs very well and wins frequently. I’m not here to debate whether or not these incidents should result in retaliation, but I do believe that Brad needs to realize he has to race a little cleaner or this is going to keep happening. When Kyle Bush races hard with Carl Edwards or Denny Hamlin there never seems to be these sorts of incidents.

 The driver’s comments in response to these incidents have started to signify they know it’s happening also. Just tonight when asked what he said to Brad after the race, Dale Earnhardt Jr responded that he was just telling him that he was going to be here a long time so try not to make a tool out of himself. While Dale didn’t elaborate on what this meant, I think he was trying to impart wisdom on Brad to slow it down a little bit and stop running into people or he’s going to burn every bridge he has.

 While my last article was very critical of Junior, one thing I can say is that he is one of the cleanest racers in the series. I hope that Brad takes a look back on the long list of incidents over the last year and a half that he has been involved in and realizes that something needs to change because he’s the only constant in the situations. He should take Dale’s advice, he’s going to be in the series for a long time to come and there is no reason to make so many enemies so quickly, as that could come back to bite him in the future. Sometimes finishing second today is going to help you win tomorrow.