The 2012 Cup Series season ended with Team Penske driver Brad Keselowski as the champion. The 28-year-old driver celebrated the achievement with one too many cans of Miller-Lite and admitted to feeling a little buzzed in his post-race interviews. Five short months later, he was standing beside then-President Barack Obama in the White House, taking in huge praise.
Advertisement
Obama had arranged the ceremony to honor Keselowski for becoming a NASCAR Cup Series champion and spoke highly of him in his address. He said, “We’re here to congratulate Brad Keselowski for winning his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship. People who’ve known Brad a long time aren’t surprised, I gather, that he’s up here.”
He added, continuing to note how the driver had spent his childhood on race tracks working for his family-owned team before getting into the car himself, “He had it in his blood from the beginning – his racer’s mentality, his commitment to the team, and his belief that you’ve always got to keep pushing to be your best.” The best part of his speech came when he praised the driver for his philanthropy.
Keselowski had been working towards the rehabilitation of soldiers injured in war through a program called Road to Recovery. This was something that pleased Obama to a great extent.
He said, “For Brad, our veterans are an important part of his team. I’m going to quote him, ‘I couldn’t do what I do on the racetrack without these men and women making the sacrifices they do for me.’”
Events like these are usually filled with witty one-liners and a celebratory mood. But that April 16 was one of somberness. The Boston Marathon bombing had occurred just the earlier day and caused huge shock across the entire nation. This is why Obama’s words about Keselowski’s involvement with war veterans hit a more sensitive nerve and portrayed him in a great light.
Both Obama and Keselowski strongly believed that going through with the event despite the act of terror was the right thing to do. They uniformly voiced that they weren’t going to let such cowardice deter them from their daily lives.
Interestingly, the president wanted to know more about the issues that Keselowski and his teammate Joey Logano were having with NASCAR at the time.
The champion spoke to the press and mentioned with a chuckle, “He wanted to know about Joey Logano and how Joey was doing after the run-in with (NASCAR), which I thought was great. I said, ‘Man, I didn’t know you followed it that closely.'”
He’d even offered to take the president for a spin in his No. 2 car around the South Lane, but the Secret Service understandably refused.
