Raybestos Rookie Brian Keselowski will be making his second NASCAR Nationwide Series start this season Saturday afternoon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Keselowski has one top-10 finish in six career starts, a 10th-place finish at Memphis (Tenn.) Motorsports Park in 2007 (race No. 33).

BRIAN KESELOWSKI, No. 28 CHEVROLET: HOW BIG IS THIS OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU? “It’s huge. This is actually a really good year to be a Raybestos Rookie. There’s not a lot of rookies that are going to be here and I haven’t seen everybody going to be full-time yet so if I’ve got any kind of an opportunity I think this year is going to be it. We’ve got to get a little better yet. We’re waiting on some sponsorship stuff to come along. We’ve got some things happening. We can’t seriously go out and get our butt kicked too bad here. We’re doing everything we have to do to try to keep us in place for a little bit further down the road.” WHAT WOULD IT MEAN FOR YOU TO WIN RAYBESTOS ROOKIE OF THE YEAR? “That’d be tremendous, just the whole thing with the Raybestos Rookie thing being the way that it is this year it’s going to be a little easier than it has in years past but it’s something that you can put on your resume. Everybody can put that on their resume and that’d be huge for me. I haven’t had a lot of chances to race full-time before so this is actually going to be my first full year in about five years of racing full-time. It’s tremendous just getting to be at the racetrack every week and getting to do stuff.” ARE YOU PLANNING TO RUN THE MAJORITY OF THE REMAINING RACES? “Yes, we’re supposed to run as of right now 32. I just ran California so I’ve got 31 more to go and possibly a couples of the road courses that I wasn’t supposed to run I might run, too. That’s not really in the cards just yet but we’re working on it and trying to make something happen.” YOUR FATHER, BOB KESELOWSKI, IS YOUR CREW CHIEF. DOES THAT GIVE YOU A COMFORT LEVEL? “Oh yeah. He was my crew chief last year, too. I only had four races that I ran last year with my own stuff and we ran really good at the end of the year. We were really happy with that. We need to get back to where we were right there with Jay’s cars [Jay Robinson, car owner]. I have a feeling that we can do that. We’ve just got a lot of work ahead of us. When we didn’t run full-time last year it gave us a lot more time to work at the shop. We need a little more time right now to get everything organized and put everything where we need it. Working with me and my Dad, it’s not any different than it would be when I was at home doing my own thing. But now I’ve got some other people that we’re working with and we need to get everything organized and put in the right place and I think we’ll be all right.” WERE YOU SURPRISED TO RUN THAT WELL AT MEMPHIS LAST YEAR AND FINISH IN THE TOP-10? “Not so much at Memphis [smiles]. Homestead, I think we really lucked into that one more than most people, really. Memphis, I felt like I was actually was going to run better than that when I got there and then we didn’t run very good and I wasn’t very happy with that. It was an all new car. Everything was all put together right, but I had never been in Memphis before and the whole thing. And by the middle of the race, I felt like I had a decent handle on it but we had some other issues with the car that wouldn’t allow me to go until the end or I wasn’t going to have any brakes left. So we worked on it and worked on it and tried to make it the best we could and at the end of the race I felt like we had a very good piece. I’m more of a short track racer anyway so I feel way more at home doing those things, way more comfortable. The more I get to run speedways I think the better I’ll be there but short track racing is where I think it’s at right now.” CAN YOU LEAN ON YOUR BROTHER BRAD FOR ADVICE? “They actually shut down a little early from practice so he come over and tried to help me out a little bit and asked me what my car was doing and gave me some suggestions to do. He’s been at more of these places than I have. He’s actually younger than me but he’s been to these places three, four times at least and got to test and whole thing and I didn’t get a chance to do that. The first time I ever seen the track was this morning and that was it. He’s learned a lot being here before and I can kind of lean on him a little bit to kind of know what I’m doing.” IS YOUR MAIN OBJECTIVE TO LOG LAPS? “Yeah, just trying to finish in a decent spot. We’re trying to get that top-30 lock-in spot. Right now I think we’re about 29th in owner points so we’re working on that. Last week didn’t help a whole lot blowing a motor towards the end of the race but we had probably a 25th-place finish locked up, I felt. All and all we weren’t running nearly as competitive as I want to but we’re running where we had to until we can get some things going down the road. If we can get a top-25 place finish here I’m going to be happy with that and we’ll go on and just try to keep the car in one piece. We’re working on getting things better but we’ve got to keep cars in one piece to be able to do that.” CAN YOU TELL HOW COMPETITIVE THE NATIONWIDE SERIES IS? “The series is very competitive. When you get Cup guys coming down here and they beat up on you pretty good it’s actually baptism by fire. Yeah, I’ve never been here but I’ve got to learn against the guys that are going to be the best. I don’t necessarily disagree with that, either. If you’re going to learn how to do this, you need to learn how to do it against people that you’re going to have to beat. I don’t have a problem with that at all.”