NASCAR: Keselowski calls for change after crash

Brad Keselowski's tongue-in-cheek Twitter post on Tuesday revealed his significant testing crash at Watkins Glen, but on Friday, Keselowski presented a sobering warning that not every driver would be as lucky as he was.

Keselowski said Friday his crash at the Glen – on the first day of a two-day NASCAR Sprint Cup Series test at the newly repaved track –  was caused by an improperly installed brake line, which sent his pedal straight to the floor and his car hard into Turn 1. He suffered no injuries, but his car sustained heavy damage.

Keselowski took a much more serious tone Friday at Pocono Raceway. Adding to the danger of the crash was Watkins Glen's asphalt runoff area, and Keselowski wants tracks to rectify similar corners that could send a car at high speed into a tire barrier or wall.

"I’m not comfortable with tracks that have runoffs that lead to very harsh angles, and that’s certainly the situation that that track has, and always has had it,” Keselowski said. "Road courses remain the most dangerous tracks in motorsports for a good reason because of that, but we know that going in.

"There's only so many of those hits you're going to take before someone gets killed; it's just the way it is. I know that. It's not something I'm comfortable with but I think as a sport there's a lot of ways to look at it. At the end of the day I am still standing here.

"Odds are that if a hundred people take that hit, one or two are not going to be standing here anymore. I think that's pretty safe to say, so since a half a dozen have taken pretty similar hits in that same part of the racetrack I would say that it begs to reason that maybe a change should be made in that area.

"But I can't say that I have a specific idea at this time because more people are going to take that hit and eventually one of us ain't gonna come back. But that's something that the smart guys that work on that stuff are going to have to figure out some time."

Keselowski won at Pocono in 2011 just days after a hard crash during testing at Road Atlanta broke his right ankle. He credits changes to his car for preventing injury during this week’s crash.

"There’s been a lot of changes in our car since 2011 with regards to safety and I think we went through, at least with Team Penske, a complete safety overhaul, from the pedals being redesigned to hopefully not break my feet, which I didn’t, which was great," he said. "The floorboards redesigned with composite materials. All the pieces that we were able to redesign performed very well.”

After his crash, Keselowski tweeted a picture of his destroyed No. 2 Team Penske Ford (above), his mangled steering wheel and a GoPro video showing the moment of impact from inside the car:

[facebook url="https://www.facebook.com/BradKeselowski/videos/vb.203138536466844/" /]

"We signed up for a certain level of risk and that's right on the edge of what's acceptable risk," he said Friday. "I think every driver has their own line and if you're looking at it from that perspective, I think every driver is saying that that's the acceptable risk they've signed up for and it falls within those parameters."

Later in the day, he defended his statements, which came in response to a question during his media availability.

"It's easy for any professional athlete to skip media questions or controversial statements, but to do so is to cheat our fans and sport," he said on Twitter. "I accept the risk of being a professional NASCAR race car driver at all tracks and plan on returning to [Watkins Glen] undaunted by this week's wreck."