If you’re going to break a femur in an off-season family skiing trip and you’re a NASCAR Cup Series driver, you might as well use a cane that features all of your sponsors, and Brad Keselowski is a shrewd businessman if nothing else.
“I won’t say it was my idea but I thought it was a good one,” said Keselowski on Wednesday during Daytona 500 Media Day.
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Brad Keselowski walks with a cane, No. 6 RFK Racing Ford
Brad Keselowski walks with a cane, No. 6 RFK Racing Ford
The incident happened on December 18 and required a titanium insert in his right thigh that hasn’t fully healed yet. The injury forced him to miss the Cookout Clash last week but that is a non-points exhibition race.
“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 said. “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.
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“There was certainly a lot of moments where you’re like, ‘Oooh, this isn’t a layup.’ About that week-four, week-five mark, I made some pretty big steps and progress quite literally but, again, I didn’t know until I got in the car what it was going to be. Until you get in a race car going 190 miles an hour, you don’t know. You don’t know how it’s going to feel.”
Doctors have cleared the 2012 champion to compete in the Daytona 500 and he is largely comfortable inside the cockpit driving full-throttle.
“When I’m in the car 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.”
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It’s just the getting in and out of the car that is the most problematic.
“You have to really turn your leg and your hips and there’s a lot of extra parts in me that aren’t quite ready for that, and I have to be intentional,” he said.
Brad Keselowski, Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford
Brad Keselowski, Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford
Keselowski has some experience reacting positively to a severe lower half injury. He won a race at Pocono in 2011 just four days after breaking his left ankle in a 100-mph testing crash at Road America.
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However, he says this injury is way worse.
“This is way more serious,” Keselowski said. “When I broke my ankle, that sucked, don’t get me wrong … it was very painful but in a couple weeks I was fairly mobile. This is a much more significant injury, unfortunately.
“It’s hard to explain to people that have never broken their femur before what it’s like. It’s not the same as breaking your leg below the knee. Your femur is the biggest bone in your body. It’s got a lot of things running through it and it has to heal. You can’t really cast it. You can’t do any of those things, so you just kind of have to tough it out.”
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He says this a six-month complete recovery time and that racing at Daytona and Atlanta should be doable but running a road course at Circuit of the Americas next month may require a relief driver.
“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.”
Road racing specialist Joey Hand would be his back-up driver if necessary.
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In real time, immediately after the incident, Keselowski wanted the entire leg sawed off. The pain was that immense.
“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’ and I was thinking about the soldiers in the Civil War,” he said. “They would just cut their leg off right there 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.’”
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Keselowski did not amputate his leg and despite missing the pre-season Clash, very much intends to keep his streak of 546 consecutive starts dating back to 2010 intact.
“I’ve never missed a points race in my Cup career,” Keselowski said. “The Clash, I’ve been ineligible for it a few times. I was ineligible for it the year after I won the championship. I don’t have an affinity for that race as a whole if that makes sense, but that said it’s a race and when there’s a race you want to be in it.
“There were moments where I was super disappointed not to be there. At the halfway break when it started raining and sleeting, that was not one of them.”
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He said that with a laugh. But more than anything, he hated missing his driver, Ryan Preece, score his first Cup Series (exhibition) victory.
“That said, seeing Ryan win was really awesome and I wish I could have been there to celebrate that with him,” he said. “You could see how pumped he was and how much it meant to him, and hopefully I’ll get that opportunity in a points-paying race.”
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