Once as a boy, I saw a man race. A week before, he’d shattered his ankle in a wreck of another car. It was a common enough thing to get hurt racing, you can’t drive a vehicle at high speeds and crash without at least being bumped and bruised, and occasionally breaking a lower limb to the point they have to put you in a cast the size of Texas. Anyway, that man won the race I was watching. His name was Brad Keslowski.
Everyone has a couple of moments that shape their life, and I think watching that happen was one for me. As a 10-year-old, seeing someone overcome what sounds like the most painful injury possible to win a 500-mile race around some weird track in Pennsylvania is formative. It’s inspiring, it’s impressive, and it kind of had me questioning whether or not complaining about the squash I had for dinner was a smaller problem than I thought. Suddenly my bigger problem was that I couldn’t buy a model car of Brad Keslowski’s because his sponsor was Miller Lite, and I was 10 years old.
For the years to come, I’d watch a lot of races, mostly with my grandfather. I saw a lot of men overcome injuries, insurmountable deficits, and all manner of other challenges to win races. My grandfather would tell me stories of watching other racers overcome all sorts of challenges in his younger days as well: crappy cars in the 70s, ill-fitting engines in the 40s, and the occasional time where a driver would get arrested for moonshining right before a race and have to cancel. I loved listening to those stories with my grandad; they brought a life to this sport we were watching that I wouldn’t have known about without him.
Most of all though, he loved telling me stories of one southern legend: the Lady in Black. She’s located in South Carolina, deep in the heart of southern territory, surrounded by miles of peanut patches, and shrunk oddly at one end thanks to a duck pond. It’s one of the oldest tracks in north America, an awkward egg-shaped oval with high banks and a fearsome reputation. The tight corners and inconsistent banking make the track incredibly difficult to race, earning it the moniker: “Too Tough to Tame.” My grandfather frequently would visit to watch the races, and he’d tell me stories about the old wooden bleachers, the smell of peanuts, and the constant sight of drivers brushing the white and red wall, leaving burnt black stripes along the edges, giving the track its other nickname: Lady in Black.
I loved listening to those stories. Every individual track has a story of its own, a mythos it builds from the moment ground is broken on it. Daytona is home to the greatest stories in American racing history. Indianapolis is the pinnacle of racing in the world. Talladega is the haunted ring of speed in the south. And Darlington is where men went to test themselves and their cars in ways that felt unreal. Some won, most lost, and some found incredible ways to fail. Just read up about the man who somehow launched himself over the fence and into the parking lot. Everyone thought he was dead, until they realized the jug of spilled tomato juice in his destroyed car was not in fact blood. Great story to hear while watching drivers whip around the track.
How this track connected to Brad Keslowski, and me by extent, was a bit interesting. Because funnily enough Brad won there a couple times. A daredevil like him was bound to happen eventually. He won, got his name carved in the trophy for the rest of time, and drank a Miller Lite while sitting on his 2 car. But that wasn’t the win that I remember when I think of Darlington.
It was what happened in 2024.
By then I was a little bit less of the enthused, bright-eyed child watching a daredevil, and more of a slightly depressed post college dude watching a childhood fixture of his slowly become less relevant. Brad was aging, I was… also aging, and when Darlington rolled around in Spring of that year I turned it on hoping for a distraction from the monotony of life. As for Brad, he was facing a new challenge: he’d just become a team owner in Nascar, owning, operating, and driving his own car. For the uninitiated, this is INCREDIBLY hard to do. Not only was Brad having to deal with all the stress of racing his car, but he had to manage day-to-day repairs, staffing for his team, and finding sponsors to pay the bills. It’s like running an NFL team… while also playing quarterback. Tough stuff, and he was doing it in the twilight of his career.
I knew all of this as I turned on the tv, but I didn’t really think about it as the race unfolded. I vaguely noticed the flashy new Castrol sponsor on his hood, and the metallic number 6 that was now on the sides and top of his car, but that was it.
Until the daredevil came back.
Late in the race, Brad had managed to drive close to the lead but wasn’t especially close. Two other drivers were battling for it, and Brad was comfortably nestled in 3rd place, on track for a solid, drama free day, without any Darlington stripes on his car either. It had been a couple years since he won a race, and like most older racers it was sort of just accepted that he might not again. Most got the impression he was… well, rather like me: going through the motions, getting by alright, and ready to move on.
Then the two guys ahead of him hit each other.
It wasn’t hard contact, but they’d gotten side by side and were racing each other close and hard. Neither was giving an inch, and both really wanted to win the race. A win at Darlington is historic, no matter how you slice it. But making contact while racing for the lead is risky. Especially when you have a veteran daredevil behind you, one who is stressed, overworked, and hadn’t won a race in a couple years.
What came next was proof that no matter how badly the grind takes you down, no matter how tough to tame a place is, a man with no fear cannot be stopped.
Brad gunned it, drove right up on his battling competitors, and swung below them, nearly to the inside wall of the track. Dust flew, both drivers above him stared down the track, and Brad somehow passed both in a single, glorious move. It was a move that I have never seen at Darlington, and one I don’t imagine most drivers would like making. But Brad Keslowski wasn’t most drivers. He was a savvy veteran with guts, intelligence, and the sheer will to win.
And win he did. He left both his competitors in the dust behind him, becoming the first owner/driver to win at Darlington in decades. It was an achievement unlike any other, and it genuinely had me falling off the couch in shock as I saw it. Not just because of the move to win, but the sheer amazement at what he’d managed to do. Somehow despite all that madness in his life, Brad Keslwski tamed the Lady in Black.
And as I watched him burnout on the front stretch of the track, smoking his tires and pumping his fist in celebration to a roaring crowd, I must admit I felt a cheer myself. Because to my shock, for the second time in my life Brad Keslwski had showed me that I might have the wrong idea about some things. Maybe life, despite its grinds, its challenges, and its unwavering desire to beat you down, doesn’t always win. All it took to convince me of that was crazy pass on a track in the middle of a peanut patch. And this time, I was old enough to buy the model of his car :)
