I’ve got to admit, I had never really known who NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski was until he sent the tweet heard round the sports world last February. Turns out not only is the guy social-media savvy, he’s a pretty good driver too, capturing his first Sprint Cup title Sunday.
Though the Chase to the Championship was tense, Sunday’s finish was decided early when top contender Jimmy Johnson went basically out of the race with 40 laps to go. That pretty much allowed Kesolowski to coast to the overall win with a 15th-place finish, and after he was done of course the first thing he did was send off a tweet.
We did it!#NASCAR twitter.com/keselowski/sta…
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) November 18, 2012
Since Daytona, we’ve been following Keselowski and I have to say he has made the sport more enjoyable for me during the season, with his quick post-race comments and regular humor. While NASCAR wisely embraced his Daytona fire-picture moment (and quickly sealed a deal with Twitter to help promote the sport even more), there seemed to be signs of a backlash with NASCAR’s recent $25K fine of Keselowski for tweeting. While some think the fine was more of a punishment for Keselowski’s profanity-laced response to the crashing and fighting at Phoenix, NASCAR should back off on the tweet-fines because the social media world will reject you as quickly as it followed you if you show even the smallest signs of “not getting it.” (MSR free marketing suggestion: Why not partner with GoPro and have automated cameras where the drivers and crews can send auto-tweets and video clips during races?)
Right now, Keselowski certainly gets it, from Twitter to the race track. Enjoy the title, No. 2 car.
(And a big race-fan thanks to senior editor Greg Quick for compiling the weekly Watching NASCAR posts!)
Speak Your Mind