Brad Keselowski is the NASCAR champion, and that’s hard to believe

I’m sitting here in the Homestead-Miami Speedway press box trying to put my thoughts together, distracted by the flashbulbs and “woo!“s from the championship celebration down below.

Mostly, it’s hard to wrap my head around this fact: Brad Keselowski is the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion.

Keselowski? Are you kidding me?

He just got here, didn’t he?

It seems like just the other day when Keselowski was the over-aggressive Nationwide Series driver battling with Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin. And didn’t he just win that crazy Talladega race for Phoenix Racing recently?

Heck, it was just last year where it seemed his fuel-mileage win at Kansas wouldn’t be enough to get him a Chase wild card spot because he couldn’t even crack the top 20 in points.

Now he’s the champion? Of the whole thing?

And that whole broken ankle thing just happened, didn’t it? After that, he won Pocono and went on a run that showed his potential for the future.

But who knew the future was 2012?

“It’s something I can’t hardly believe right now,” team owner Roger Penske said.

Me neither!

Just three years ago, Keselowski was flying commercial to Homestead with the rest of us. I distinctly remember talking to him at baggage claim about his decision to join Penske Racing for the next season. He wasn’t even in the Sprint Cup Series yet.

That’s the same guy who won it tonight? For real?

It’s hard to digest, because this all seems so unlikely.

Wasn’t this only his third season? Isn’t he only 28? Didn’t he drive for a lame-duck manufacturer? Wasn’t his teammate (interim driver Sam Hornish Jr.) probably little help with information sharing?

Brad Keselowski?

He actually won it?

“I can’t believe it,” Keselowski said. “I can’t believe how everything came together over the last three years.”

Me neither!