About a year ago when Brad Keselowski was wrecked in the Daytona 500, his reaction, as he climbed out of the ruins of his Penske car, was something that was a subject of many people’s curiosity. Why was he so mad?

After all, it wasn’t the first time he had been wrecked or taken out of a race in that fashion. And even if the stakes were as high as Daytona, something else must’ve been the case, surely.

It was.

Brad Keselowski had told his ailing father, Bob, that he would win the Daytona 500 for him. And then he didn’t after coming really close.

“The sting of Daytona…,” Keselowski said in a recent interview. “I knew my dad didn’t have much time left this time last year and he actually made it a lot longer than I thought he would. I don’t know if that’s the kind of fighter he is or was. But I told him before I left for Daytona, ‘I’m going to win you the Daytona 500, Dad’.”

“That’s part of what stung so bad, losing it the way I did last year. I wanted to win it for him.”

“I owe a lot of my success to him” – Brad Keselowski on father Bob Keselowski

Brad Keselowski calls himself ‘in between’ of people who are self-made and who are a product of their family and upbringing. Speaking about his father, Keselowski said, “My dad loved the sport to death. He was one of those kind of guys behind the scenes more often than in front of the camera.”

“It takes a lot of people behind the scenes to support everybody in front of the camera and he gave the sport his life from Day 1. And that’s special to me. I’m proud of him. I’m proud of the things he’s done,” he continued.

“I owe a lot of my success to him.”

Unfortunately for the RFK driver, his father passed away in December 2021, never having seen his son winning the Great American Race.

But a year later from his wreck, Brad Keselowski is back at the Daytona 500 with a new team and a renewed hope of honoring his late father’s memory at the biggest stage there is in NASCAR.

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