Jeff Gluck

USA TODAY Sports

Our series of weekly NASCAR driver interviews continues with Brad Keselowski, who leads the Sprint Cup Series point standings heading into the first-round elimination race Sunday at Dover International Speedway.

Q: What is an errand or chore in your daily life people might be surprised to learn you do yourself?

A: Grocery shopping. I like grocery shopping. It’s easier for me to visualize what I want if I’m at the grocery store.

Do you cook?

Heck no. But at least I know what I want if I go to the store.

Q: If you could do any race over again, which race would you choose?

A: I normally don’t think that way, because I think it’s a bad habit. You’ve got to keep moving forward. But if there is one that I would really like to do over again, I would say it’s easily the 2014 Daytona 500 (when he finished third).

Refresh my memory on how that went.

We were just really fast the whole weekend and we pitted for four tires leading the race with 25 or 30 laps to go. We came out probably 16th because a bunch of guys took two tires. I got up to second with five laps to go and a yellow came out. I just didn’t get a great restart, nothing really came together and Dale Jr. won.

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Q: The longest race of the year is 600 miles. How long of a race could you physically handle without a driver change?

A: It really depends on the conditions, but I kind of feel like we could probably go about 24 hours if the conditions were good.

Seriously? Without getting out?

Yeah, I think I could pull that off. It would be a long day. But if all the conditions were normal and it wasn’t super hot, then you would just slow down and wouldn’t push as hard early in the race. Like in the 600, you don’t use your car up early in the race. Well in this race, it would just be you that you don’t use up.

I guess you’d have to pee several times though.

We could just put a catheter in and stuff.

Oh, gross.

Well there’s a number of drivers who do that now.

Really?

Yeah.

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Q: Let’s say president of NASCAR was an elected position voted on by the drivers — and you decided to run. What would one of your campaign promises be?

A: First off, it’s important to remember NASCAR is not a democracy, and I don’t see it ever becoming one. So the likelihood of ever running for NASCAR office is very, very slim.

I always hate campaigns to begin with, because it’s really just a bunch of lies where you tell people things they want to hear, but not what they need to hear. I’d rather just go off what you’ve done in the past, but that doesn’t always work. People like to be lied to, I guess.

If I had to campaign, I’d just campaign with my background of who I am and what I stand for and what I intend to do with the sport. Who I am and what I stand for is somewhat well known; as for my intentions with the sport, it would be simple: To grow it for everyone. Someone once told me high tides raise all ships, so my goal would be to raise the tides for everyone.

That’s more of a campaign goal than a campaign promise, but I feel like you should say your goal instead of a promise because promises are dynamic.

Would you ever consider running for real political office?

Paige (White, his girlfriend) and I have talked about it before. She thinks I’m crazy, but I would never rule it out.

Q: At the start of this year, exactly 2,900 drivers had ever raced in the Sprint Cup Series. Where do you rank among those 2,900?

A: I was the 29th driver to win a championship, so I think I’d just go off that.

So top 30?

No, actually 29th.

That’s a very exact answer.

Yeah, because it’s based off a real number. There are 15 drivers who have won more than one championship. So if I won another championship, I’d get to 16th. Isn’t that what the sport is supposed to be about? Championships? I don’t need to rate myself if there’s already a system, right?

It would be easy to put Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty as the top two based off that, and I think everybody would agree with that. Jimmie (Johnson) would be third, Jeff (Gordon) would be fourth. Seems pretty legit to me.

I know there’s probably someone out there who doesn’t like me who is saying, “That’s ridiculous.” I like going off numbers. I’ve been at Penske for so long and they’ve got engineers who love numbers, and that’s how they’d answer it.

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Q: What do you think your reputation is — and is that reputation accurate?

A: Well I’m not sure I know what my reputation is. And I don’t know if it’s fair to me whether or not it’s right or wrong, because it’s not for me to decide. It’s their choice. I can only say how I feel about it, which is that I’ve done some hard driving, made some mistakes, ruffled a few feathers along the way, caused some accidents, won some races and led a team to a championship and I’m proud of that.

I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that, although I think some people want to make it more complicated than that. That’s part of what makes the sport fun.

Q: A famous chef wants you to invest in the new restaurant he’s opening, but he wants you to pick the cuisine. What type of food would your restaurant serve?

A: Farm to table. That’s my favorite type of food. It’s always healthy. I’ve been into that for probably three years or so. Farm to table gets rid of a lot of waste in the entire system, reduces a lot of chemicals in the environment and just makes sense to me.

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Q: What is the most daring thing you’ve done outside of racing?

A: That’s easy; fly with the Blue Angels. I still feel like I should have died in that experience, but it was once in a lifetime, so I said yes. I’m a driver, so I’m a control freak; and I wasn’t in control, so it made it feel worse to me.

Q: In a move to generate more excitement, NASCAR decides in an upcoming race they’re going to require every driver to have a passenger in the car. You get to pick the passenger. Who do you choose?

A: I’d pick Paige. I think she’d have fun and enjoy it, which is cool. And when we’re all done, we’d have something really neat to talk about.

Q: How often do you talk inside the car without hitting the radio button?

A: Never. That seems so weird to me. Every once in awhile, it’ll be one word like, “Dangit!” I remember when I was a kid and we’d drive to racetracks from Michigan and it would be like six hours, 10 hours, 12 hours in the car. And we’d go a whole car ride and I swear my dad would sometimes never say a word the entire time. So I guess maybe I got it from him.

Q: Who will win the Sprint Cup in 2021?

A: I don’t know. I kind of feel like the system is orchestrated in such a way that it’s a lottery. So I can probably just tell you who will be in the lottery. I think there will be about five of us: Me, Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, Kyle Larson and probably one young driver — maybe Chase Elliott.

Q: I’ve been asking each driver to give me a question for the next interview. The last interview was with Erik Jones, and he wanted to know: What was your favorite track to race Late Models at in Michigan and why?

A: It was actually a track he used to run at a lot — Owosso. It was a good track. I wrecked there one time, which really sucked. But it was fast, somewhat symmetrical. A little bit of banking, but not too much. I really liked running there.

It wasn’t my favorite Late Model track, though. That was Toledo, but that’s in Ohio. It’s right on the border, though, so it feels like Michigan.

And do you have a question for the next interview?

What do you think an athlete’s responsibility to the community is or should be?

Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck