By Matt Yoder, Awful Announcing
After Jimmie Johnson wrecked at Phoenix, Brad Keselowski assumed the points lead in NASCAR's Chase with just one race remaining. Keselowski leads by 20 points and can clinch his first title with just a 15th placed finish next week. But Keselowski wasn't in the mood for celebrating after his turn of good fortune following Sunday's race. In his post race press conference, Keselowski went on an awe-inspiring profane rant against fellow drivers.
Keselowski was upset over criticism lobbied at him for aggressive driving last week from drivers such as Tony Stewart for racing Jimmie Johnson too hard at Texas and having a "death wish." After the Phoenix race, Keselowski was furious over Jeff Gordon intentionally wrecking Clint Bowyer and opined on the incident in light of criticism he has faced. Keselowski believes he was targeted unfairly for racing hard by fellow drivers while they wreck each other. The Gordon-Bowyer collision led to a fight in the pits and Bowyer (and ESPN's cameras) sprinting to try to find Gordon in one of the wildest scenes of the year. Keselowski himself is no stranger to feuds and controversy after his many notable incidents with Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards in past years.
The scenes of madness set off the current NASCAR championship leader, whose rant can be seen in the video excerpt below...
"That's fucking bullshit, that's all you can call that. These guys just tried to kill each other. You race hard and I get called an asshole for racing hard and called with a death wish and I see shit like that and it just pisses me off. I'm not yelling at you Dave, but it's just fucking ridiculous. And they should be ashamed."
Yes, one of these days, someone is going to get seriously injured from all the retaliatory wrecking that takes place in the sport. But in the meantime, Gordon, Bowyer, and Keselowski all increased the interest in the season finale at Miami tenfold. Like most other sports, nothing sells in NASCAR quite like controversy and feuds between stars. It's just that in NASCAR, the consequences of those feuds involve racing cars at 200 miles per hour.
(H/T Josh_Batelli)
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