Imagine you’re a Nascar driver. If you’re battling think, speed, an oval track and dozens of luminously painted cars driving as fast as they can all around you. Now imagine one of your fellow drivers crashed and the race ground to a halt. What would you do? If you’re Brad Keselowski the answer is simple: start tweeting.
According to the New York Times the accident occurred when former Formula 1 driver, Juan Pablo Montoya crashed in to the safety truck. The truck “which holds 200 gallons of jet kerosene”, then reportedly “burst into flames”.
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Both Montoya and the safety truck driver were uninjured.
The race ground to a halt for nearly two hours. As so many of us have done while stuck in traffic Keselowski took to Twitter and, according to Mashable, gained over 100 000 followers in two hours.
The driver’s first tweet after the accident saw him sending a picture of his view of the inferno:
Fire!My view twitter.com/keselowski/sta…
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) February 28, 2012
Keselowski then began engaging with his followers, answering their questions and responding to the updates they were giving him from the outside world:
Any1 can@bobpockrass: Could Blaney win this race. #nascar”
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) February 28, 2012
No worriesWe stopped @LisShoe: @keselowski please! Don’t tweet and drive! Lol 😉 ;)”
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) February 28, 2012
hope he is ok“@jim_utter: Driver of jet dryer has been taken to Halifiax Medical Center for further evaluation.#NASCAR”
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) February 28, 2012
60%@jeff_gluck: How much battery life you have left on your phone? RT @keselowski: So what does every1 think of the #DAYTONA500 ?”
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) February 28, 2012
He also tweeted a picture of Nascar official giving an update on how close the race was to restarting:
My friendly #nascar official Says we r close#DAYTONA500 twitter.com/keselowski/sta…
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) February 28, 2012
By the end of the night Keselowski had over 200 000 followers.
Thank you followers!@SEBnPJB: Whoa congrats @keselowski 200k followers!”
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) February 28, 2012
The fact that Keselowski was tweeting from an iPhone lends itself to some interesting possibilities. Maybe he could get someone to hack Siri for him so he can send out Tweets at full speed next time. Now that would get him followers.
