CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Brad Keselowski’s claim sounds outrageous when you look at the numbers.Keselowski said at the recent NASCAR Sprint Media Tour he actually drove better last season than his championship year of 2012. The numbers tell another story with only one win and a 14th-place finish in the series points. In fact, he was the first driver since Tony Stewart in 2006 to miss the Chase one year after winning the championship.But, auto racing isn’t like other sports. There aren’t big lists of statistics to differeniate individual performance from team success. The majority of credit goes to the driver when a team wins races, and the majority of the blame goes to him when a team fails to do so. All you have is Keselowski’s words when it comes to his behind-the-wheel performance.“I felt like I ran some of the best races of my life last year,” the 28-year-old driver said. “Quite honestly in a lot of ways, I felt I was a better driver last year than in 2012. But, this is not an individual sport. “You can argue the team side carried me a little in 2012, and I could argue the vice versa side of that in 2013. It’s a team sport and it’s collective of all of us to get it done, and we didn’t last year.”Still, there was a lot of soul searching for Keselowski and the whole No. 2 Penske Racing Ford team during this offseason. There had to be an honest assessment of where they met expectations and where they fell short. As a driver, Keselowski felt many of last season’s problems came from pushing too hard at times.“You have to compare your success to your failures and try to understand the difference,” he said. “Like I said, there was a series (of failures) across the board with us. That’s our job to reticify that.”He still has the full support of teammate Joey Logano, who Keselowski praised for bringing the No. 22 team back to the level it was with former champion Kurt Busch. More importantly, Keselowski still has the support of team owner Roger Penske, whose history of drivers reads like a Hall of Fame roster with names like Mark Donohue, Al Unser, Bobby Allison and Rusty Wallace.He sees Keselowski as that same kind of driver.“He has to show people it wasn’t a fluke in 2012,” Penske said. “When I look back, he won seven races running in the Nationwide Series. He won a (Cup) race and not everybody won a race. To me, he’s an elite driver. He certainly had a lot of success for our team last year.”Keselowski, a 10-time winner in the Cup Series, credits his legendary car owner for making him better both on and off the race track.“As a driver, growing a lot has come from Roger Penske as a car owner,” he said. “That’s personal and professional, understanding his approach to things and why he’s successful. I’ve made a lot of growth in that way.”Still he jokes while he’s gotten better as a race car driver over the last five years, in some ways, maybe worse as a person. Perhaps, it’s not a fair assessment for someone who is simply wanting to live in the moment.“I’m trying to enjoy the ride as a person and do some great things,” he said. “It’s a privilege to be a race car driver, and there are some great privileges that go with that, whether it’s tv shows, finances. You have to enjoy that while you can, and give back when you can in those senses.”
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