Brad Keselowski Reveals Dark Reality Of Winning NASCAR Races

The smartest driver in the NASCAR garage, Brad Keselowski, used to be the most bored driver in the NASCAR garage. 

And that's never where you wanna be when you're at work. 

Sure, I'm bored all the time, but that's because I have 12 meetings a week. 

But that's not why Brad was bored. 

No, Brad was bored – and, frankly, kind of depressed – because he won so many races, his bosses were forced to stop caring about him for a time. Seriously. 

Because of the now-defunct playoff format, Keselowski used to be cast aside in the middle of a season after winning a few races because he was already locked into the playoffs. That meant the team needed to focus on getting their other drivers into the playoffs. 

And that led to Brad showing up to the track saying, "What am I doing here?"

"I sit in meetings, and they're like, 'All right, Brad, uh you don't get the good engine or the good car this week because someone else in the company isn't locked in the playoffs, so they get all the good stuff for this week,'" Keselowski said while filling in on Dale Jr.'s podcast. 

"And you're like, ‘Oh, okay. I guess that kind of makes sense.’ You found yourself like in the middle of the season, and you'd be showing up at, like, Pocono or whatever, and you'd be like … what the hell am I doing here?"

NASCAR got it right, but it took a while 

Well, if this doesn't officially vindicate all the NASCAR playoff detractors, I don't know what will. This should pretty much end that argument for good. 

NASCAR, for those who don't know, nixed the old playoff format after last season. Put simply, it was a win-and-in format for the first 26 races of the regular season. If you won, at any point, you were locked into the 10-race playoff. 

Fans liked it at first because, as Brad said, it created sort of artificial Game 7 moments. That was fun … for a while. But, after a few years, it started to feel … artificial. Drivers, clearly, grew tired of the format, too. This conversation Brad's alluding to took place in 2018. 

2018! 

That was nearly a DECADE ago, as depressing as that sounds. He was showing up to races eight years ago and not caring about them for months at a time, and NASCAR just now decided to change the format? 

Talk about red tape! 

Anyway, I guess the important thing is they finally did fix it. We're now back in the old "Chase" format, where wins matter, but they're still basically points-racing all season. That's what the sport did for a decade before adopting the "playoff" format, and it seemed to work just fine. 

Sounds like Brad Keselowski, and others, will now have a reason to show up to work this summer. 

No more PTO required!