By David Newton
ESPN.com

It is the last day of school and everybody is excited about getting out for the summer — except for one shy eighth-grade boy. He is nervous, having been told by a group of kids they are going to “get [him]” on his two-block walk home.

So he goes to one of his teachers with whom he has worked closely as a student assistant and they successfully devise a plan to sneak him out.

“He always was the square peg in a round hole,” said the teacher, Christine Owoc, now retired. “He was the one that always got bullied, who always got picked on.”

Flash forward. The now 26-year-old kid is driving a Sprint Cup car at more than 190 mph down the frontstretch at Atlanta Motor Speedway when a fellow competitor clips him from behind. That picked-on kid spins and goes airborne, the car landing on its top so violently it bends the roll cage.

The competitor makes no secret it was deliberate, that he was trying to send a message. Many of his fellow competitors agree it was well deserved because of the problems the kid has caused others in the past year.

The kid still feels picked on.

You’ve probably figured out that the kid is Brad Keselowski. This piece starts in middle school because that is where the driver of Penske Racing’s No. 12 Dodge suggested prior to the 2010 season was the best place to find out what makes him tick.

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