By: Toby Christie – Follow on Twitter @Tobalical

Despite being a five-time winner in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, and being a NASCAR Nationwide Series champion in 20120, the thing that has drawn the most headlines nationally for the 28-year-old NASCAR driver is his twitter account @Keselowski. During a red-flag in this year’s Daytona 500, which was for of all things a jet dryer truck fire, Keselowski became the first driver to tweet from inside his racecar.

Instantly he gained over 200,000 followers in a matter of just moments. Little Brad Keselowski from Rochester Hills, Michigan became the headline story on Yahoo.com, MSN.com heck even every major news network. It was a big story — a NASCAR driver tweeting photos to the world, from inside his car during a race — now it may have been during a red flag — to that point nobody had even heard of drivers carrying their cell phones in the car. In that sense Keselowski is a revolutionary member of social media for his sport.

Friday I got the opportunity to ask Keselowski about the importance of social media in auto racing, you could see a smile reach his face as he fielded the question, and immediately one of the most prominent drivers on Twitter took off with the subject.

“I think social media is very important to the sport, and it is very important to future generations and to increasing the younger demographic in our sport. I think it’s well documented that that’s very much needed. And I’m glad to be at least what I feel like to be in the forefront of that,” Keselowski stated.

To say that Keselowski is at the forefront of social media for NASCAR drivers is an understatement at best. After six races this season Keselowski’s follower total on Twitter now stands at a very firm 257,703 — not too shabby at all, and it continues to grow day-by-day as his loyal fans and outsiders of the sport continue to keep up with what the young rising star of the sport is up to.

I also asked Keselowski if NASCAR should either find a way to tie the yearly Most Popular Driver award into social media statistics instead of it’s current fan vote, or if they should just make a new award all together for the “Most Social Driver.”

“Should they tool it to anything? I don’t think they should tool it to anything or anyone. Other than the fans. If the fans feel that social media is worthy — or a driver that is strong on social media is worthy of more popularity then they’ll vote that way.”

What do you think? Should the most popular driver award that has easily been won by Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the past nine seasons find a way to include a driver’s performance on social media? Should they just add an all-new award dedicated to social media all together? Or should they leave it all alone? Voice your opinions below, in as many characters as you’d like as our comments section doesn’t limit you.

– Toby Christie is the lead Motorsports writer for Sicknissified.com, and he can be reached via twitter or email. Tweet him @Tobalical or email him at tobalical@sicknissified.com. You can also find his work at TheFinalLap.com this weekend.