Like an NFL running back, each time Brad Keselowski is on a racetrack, he’s looking to run for daylight and the win. There’s another comparison between Keselowski and players and coaches in the NFL: both study films to try and find opponents’ weaknesses and what things can be done to exploit those weaknesses.
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That’s why it’s not a complete surprise that Keselowski believes NASCAR is tougher than the NFL when it comes to act upon some of the tendencies that are seen on racing “game film.”
“What make motorsports I think more difficult than other sports, if you think about football, each play is three to seven seconds, they’re pretty short plays, and then you’ve got like 30 seconds in-between until they snap the ball again, or they may call a timeout,” Keselowski said on this week’s edition of RFK Racing’s “Backstretch Banter” podcast.
You don’t get those types of action-slowing or action-stopping interludes between laps in a NASCAR race — unless a yellow or red flag comes out.
“When you’re in the (race) car, particularly in a green flag scenario, you don’t get those resets,” Keselowski pointed out. “You don’t get that moment to catch your breath, or you saw the move (an opposing driver) made, and while you were studying film, that means his next move is going to be this, and I can adapt to it.
“(Whereas in racing) you’ve gotta get into that next corner and you don’t have those moments to reflect and pause. That puts more significance mentally into having those moves top-of-mind and makes the game film analysis, in some ways to me at least, more important in motorsports than in other sports.”
There’s One Thing Keselowski Won’t Necessarily Hear in His Helmet
“I’m probably not going to get radio communication in my ear from a crew chief saying it’s time to run this move, this play, now’s our shot, and break the huddle. That moment doesn’t exist, so you have to create in the moment or know in the moment.
“I really appreciate that about motorsports in some ways and hate it in others. There are these scenarios that run through my head after races where I say to myself, ‘Man, I wish I would have saw this piece of film right before this happened and I could have done this, this, or this.’ But it’s part of the uniqueness of motorsports,” he concluded.
