Daytona 500 race driver Brad Keselowski sends Twitter ablaze

A NASCAR driver who tweeted while dodging crashes in yesterday's Daytona 500 captured 100,000 new followers during the race.

Daytona 500

AS Juan Pablo Montoya's car burst into flames and fire crews dashed to his rescue, Brad Keselowski reached calmly for his mobile phone. This was time to let his Twitter followers catch up with the excitement.

It would not have been a problem - except that Keselowski was at the wheel of his own racing car a little way behind the Montoya fireball.

Keselowski took social networking to a new level on Monday night in the US during one of the biggest motor races in the calendar in the country. The Daytona 500 is a showpiece event of NASCAR, the country's most popular race series, and had been delayed 24 hours by pouring rain before the race went ahead under floodlights.

The American was clearly adopting the spirit of Hollywood in Oscars week with a case of floodlights, camera, action as he lined up his Dodge car on the grid.

Most professional sports frown on avid tweeters in their ranks, but tweeting at the wheel of a 320km/h racing car took the craze to new heights. When Montoya's car crashed into a truck late in the race, spreading a huge blaze across the track and forcing the former McLaren Formula One driver to flee for his life, Keselowski peered through his windscreen, ready with his camera phone.

"Fire! My view," he tweeted with a picture for his fans. Although some of his fans replied with pleas to put down his phone - one wrote: "Kids, don't text and drive" and another: "Please! Don't tweet and drive! Lol" - Keselowski's enthusiasm drew in an extra 100,000 followers during the course of the race.

Far from discouraging Keselowski, NASCAR authorities, ever alive to a new marketing opportunity, are said to be taking a lenient attitude.

It seems impossible to imagine Lewis Hamilton or Sebastian Vettel tweeting from the cockpit of a Formula One car, but NASCAR drivers have plenty of elbow room in their enormous saloons, which are so dated that the series has adopted fuel-injection systems - a device that has been commonplace on family saloons for more than two decades - for the first time this season.

But Keselowski's rivals were almost as enthusiastic about his obsession with his phone, perhaps because the 28-year-old could only finish in 32nd position. "That's how Brad is," Dale Earnhardt Jr, the runner-up to Matt Kenseth, said. "That's what he makes and what he enjoys. I thought it was pretty funny."

Montoya was merely relieved to be leaving Daytona in one piece, even though he was slightly chargrilled by the experience. The result of his freak accident as the Daytona 500 wound down to its conclusion could have been devastating and the quixotic Colomb-ian was lucky to escape with no more than a sore foot.

Montoya had been to the pits complaining of a vibration on his Chevrolet, only to be sent back out on to the track. As cars circled slowly under a caution 40 laps from the chequered flag, Montoya's car suddenly snapped sideways as something broke and it ploughed into the back of a jet dryer truck carrying 760 litres of aviation fuel.

"I got on to the back straight and I was in fourth gear but I wasn't really going that fast," Montoya said. "Every time I got into the gas, I could feel the rear end [sliding], so I got on the brakes. While I was telling the spotter [by radio] that the rear was moving, the car just turned right.

"I thought, 'I'm actually hitting the jet and it's not going to be fun.' Before I got there, I was thinking this thing was going to be on fire pretty bad. And it was. I saw the flames. My helmet got a little burnt and everything."

With fuel spilling from the truck down the banking of the oval raceway, Montoya was able to leap to safety, as was Duane Barnes, the driver whose truck was being used to blow moisture and debris from the track. Both men were found to be unscathed after medical checks.

"He [Barnes] was OK. He just looked pretty scared," Montoya said. "I'm sure he's pretty shaken and going to be sore. It's not the way you want to finish the Daytona 500. My foot hurts."

It was the climax of a chaotic night that started badly for Danica Patrick, the golden girl of American motor racing.

Thousands of Daytona race fans were expecting great things of the woman who has become the world's third highest-earning female sports star after a stellar career in IndyCar, but Patrick managed only two laps before she was caught up in a crash.

Her car was patched up, but she was only able to finish a disappointing 38th, making it three races and three straight failures for Patrick.

The Times