'DEGA Driver Quotes

“This is NASCAR racing at its finest. This was a great show. I really hope everyone enjoyed it, because I had fun. I found myself laughing in the race car halfway through the race, and I hope the fans were cheering and having fun, too?”

“There has to be some element of danger into it. No different than a football player. Who doesn’t love watching football players hit each other head- on as fast as they can? I think that’s how John Madden made his career, saying boom. That’s what the fans want. They want contact.”

“If we would have ran all race without a single lap of contact everyone in the media center would have wrote about how boring of a race it was, and instead we ran one of the best races you could ever watch on TV with full contact the whole time.”

“I don’t want to wreck anyone, but to say a no-contact sport is fun, I don’t buy that. Theses guys want to see contact just as much as I want to give and take it”

- Brad Keselowski

How does it feel to be back at Talladega where you earned your first Cup victory?

“I love it. I love coming to Talladega. It’s a great track - - one of my favorites. Three-wide at 200, you can’t beat it. The fans here are awesome. They’re super dedicated and I like it.”

“I do like running at Talladega and we always run good here. The fans they’re always great to us here so I enjoy coming here”

“We always put on a great show and there always a lot of drama”

“It’s a unique place and it’s got a great history too.”

Can you talk about how special Talladega Superspeedway is to you guys as drivers?

“Its great, great race to watch. It’s a fun race to be in. It does a good job at maintaining excitement in the sport.”

Do you recall your first Talladega memory?

“I’d been to Daytona and seen races at Daytona and had never been to Talladega to actually see a race and just coming through the tunnel, this place was so big and so fast and it was quite an experience. I still have that same experience coming through the tunnel. You come through here and think, ‘This place is really, really cool.’ The history and the great drivers that have come through that tunnel are some of the really great ones- Bobby Allison, Richard Petty and all those guys in there hay day came through there so its pretty special to be able to do that too.”

“If a guy is coming at a pretty good speed behind you, its hard to block him, but blocking is part of racing- you just have to be smart about how you go about it and not be too aggressive about blocking.”

"Oh, this win is the best thing—best thing to ever happen to me. I’d really like to dedicate this to Neil Bonnett’s family. I would really like to dedicate that to them and everybody that helped me throughout the years.”

“I would race a while, work a while, build up some money and then come back and race. Some people try and do it the other way, and, blam, in a year or so, they have to fold up or whatever because it’s really, really expensive to do this.”

“Winston Cup racing, or Sprint Cup racing, is the hardest racing in the world.”

“How old am I? I’ve been to all the Talladega races, okay.”

“This has been a great track for us. Drafting, restrictor plates a lot of tight racing. It’s pretty white- knuckle out there for the drivers. I think its’ a heck of a show for the fans.”

“Yeah, you do race different with this car than you used to. You’ve got to be a little more aggressive especially in the closing laps because it’s a lot easier to get shuffled out. You can go from fifth to first on the last lap. You can go from first to 15th on the last lap too so you’ve got to race a little bit different.”

“Here the car is so stuck to the racetrack that you get pumped and the car doesn’t move around, you know, it’s kind of solid, and I think that’s what promotes a bigger pack here than it does at Daytona.”

“I really enjoy the restrictor plate racing. Really get a kick out of it. Having everybody so close together. It is not about who has the fastest car. Its is about putting yourself in the right position, getting the right runs, doing the right stuff always goes a long way.”

“This place, I haven’t had the change to win here just yet, so it gets you that much more pumped up if you haven’t won at a track before. I’ve been close on restrictor plate races, but just haven’t been quite able to put her in Victory Lane just yet.”

“These races at Talladega are really all by themselves. It’s a lot more mental than physical, or getting your car to handle, its more about he draft and being in the right place at the right time.”

 

Do you feel helpless at a track like this?

“Tomorrow really is just all driver and that’s cool compared to some of the other tracks that we go to where a guy with a better car might win.”

Do you enjoy restrictor plate racing?

“Coming here to Talladega is always fun to race and a lot of dicing and beating and banging and stuff. Nothing better than doing it at 190 miles-per-hour.

“To me this is definitely on edge. This is the most intense thing that I’ve experienced in my racing career for sure.”