DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Brad Keselowski didn’t know in January if he would walk again, but there he was walking with a cane Wednesday at Daytona International Speedway.
And, of course, driving a race car.
Keselowski passed a 50-lap driving test Monday at Charlotte Motor Speedway that gave him the confidence he could race the Daytona 500 this week. And less than two months after breaking his femur on Dec. 18 when he fell on ice getting out of his vehicle at a ski resort.
“I’m eight weeks in and I’ll tell you, until about three to five weeks in, there was a question of if I was going to walk again — let alone drive a race car,” Keselowski told reporters Wednesday at Daytona 500 media day. “Those were the thoughts that were going through my mind. I was confident I was going to put the work in and I was going to own whatever result there was.”
The result was that Keselowski practiced Wednesday and set to qualify his car for the Daytona 500.
“When I’m in the car, I feel I know I’ve got an injury, don’t get me wrong, but I feel the best in the car,” Keselowski said. “The seat is molded to me really well, and you get a little adrenaline flowing. So I felt pretty good.”
The Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing co-owner and driver obviously wanted to race in the biggest event of the season, a race he hasn’t won in 16 starts. The 2012 Cup champion sheared his right femur and lost some feeling in his upper leg. The intense rehab of more than six hours a day got him into a position to race with an injury that likely won’t truly be healed for at least another four months.
“When I was laying on the ground, and I was completely immobile immediately after I broke my leg, what was going through my mind was like, ‘Oh my God — think about the soldiers in the Civil War. They would just cut their leg off right here.’
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“And I understood why they would do it because it hurt so bad. It was by far the worst pain I ever went through. I get why they would bring out the hacksaw. There was part of me that’s like, ‘That might actually feel better.’”
After practice Wednesday, the team made some slight changes to the cockpit area as far as where his knees could hit a bar with the way he is seated in the car.
“There’s not a lot you can do,” Keselowski said. “We put a little bit of soft padding in one section, but ultimately it is what it is.”
Keselowski has former Cup driver David Ragan as a backup for the next couple of weeks and then will use road-racing standout Joey Hand as his backup for the road-course race Mar. 1 at Circuit of the Americas.
“COTA is a big concern for me,” Keselowski said. “I’ve got two-and-a-half weeks to COTA. If I had to run the full race today, I’m not 100 percent sure I could do it. But I’ll have another two weeks of reps and rehab to continue to gain and hopefully I can get there.”
Keselowski turns 42 on Friday and reiterated that he wants to continue racing for at least another few years. He was laughing and in a good mood Wednesday, even showing off the cane with the sponsor logs on it.
“Got to own it,” Keselowski joked. “This is NASCAR. … I knew I probably was going to get picked on a little bit and at some point, own it.”
