Keselowski credits Dale Jr. with move; has multi-year deal with Penske

Brad Keselowski lives in a townhome on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s property and drives for Dale Jr. in the Nationwide series.

 

Tuesday, it became official that Keselowski will move to Penske Racing in 2010 and drive in both the Cup and Nationwide series for that organization. Keselowski credited Dale Jr. with encouraging him to make the move and said that Dale Jr. won't kick him off the land for moving on. Keselowski admits they may become even closer friends now since they won't be tied by business.

 

Also, there's been a lot of discussion of if Keselowski would be at Penske one year and head back to Hendrick Motorsports and take over for Mark Martin once Martin's two-year deal ends after next season. Well, Tim Cindric, president of Penske Racing, said in a conference call with reporters that Keselowski has a multi-year deal. He did not elaborate.

 

Even if there are outs in the contract that would allow Keselowski to return to car owner Rick Hendrick, Keselowski didn't sound like a guy looking to head back there quickly.

 

"I want to be the guy that comes to Penske Racing and gives them their first NASCAR championship,'' Keselowski said Tuesday. "I'm going to put a full effort into being that guy that gets it done.

 

"My intent is to come to Penske Racing and build a home for the long-term future of my career. That's my full intent, to be successful and accomplish those things. There are very few teams at this level that have the resources to compete with Hendrick Motorsports and this is one of them. In the decision-making process that I went through, it became fairly evident that no matter what route I went down, I was going to have to build a team. Building a team is more than building cars and buying transporters or war wagons or pit boxes, it's about people and it's about putting the right people together. This seemed like the best place to do that.''

 

Keselowski, who ranks third in the Nationwide series andhas three wins along with a Cup win at Talladega this year, said that Hendrick tried to put together a deal to keep him in the fold but it just couldn't be done. Hendrick was at its limit of four cars. Stewart-Haas Racing doesn't have the sponsorship to add a third car.

 

"Over the last month before this, just the opportunities started to not come to fruition and I think we both could see it,'' Keselowski said. "We talked about it and Mr. Hendrick said he would keep working on different scenarios and he did. He worked as hard as he could. He told me something that I thought was pretty interesting that he worked much harder on my deal than he ever had to work on Jimme's or Jeff's or any of them to try to find a way to keep me in camp. It became obvious that it was just not in the cards. There were too many things going against us.''

 

That made moving to Penske easiier, along with some advice from Dale Jr.

 

"He was actually one of the people that pushed me fairly hard to take this deal, as surprising as that might be to some people or some fo the fans or media,'' Keselowski said. "He brought up one of the good points that stuck with me when I made this decision, which like I said earlier, was the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my life, and that was when you have the opportunity to grow and to take on new challenges and you're capable of conquering those challenges, you need to take. You need to grow when you have the opporutnity to grow not only in your career but as a person and this is a great opportunity for me to grow.''

 

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Calling NASCAR fans ... The Cup Series is back in the South for the first time since 2003 when Darlington held its last race on that date before the race moved to California. ... Wanted to hear what fans in the South think of the race being back in this region on Labor Day. ... E-mail me at dustin.long@news-record.com and include your location and a phone number that I might reach you at in the next few days. Thanks.

 

And you can follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/dustinlong

 

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