Keselowski hopeful of full-time drive

The 25-year-old won in just his fifth outing in NASCAR's top series, driving a Hendrick Motorsports car for Phoenix Racing. He has been linked since last year with sharing the drive of the #5 car at Hendrick next season with Mark Martin.

However veteran Martin has yet to decide on his plans for 2010 and has not ruled out running full-time again, something that would leave Keselowski without an opening because teams will be limited to four cars, which Hendrick has already been running for the past few years.

Keselowski says he is still in talks with Rick Hendrick about next season but admitted he would be forced to look elsewhere.

"The basics of it are that we still have a few months to work some other things out," said Keselowski. "Specifically I'm working with HMS and owe it to them to see what they can work out. I think the key part about this whole situation of where I'm at with contracts and next year is that you stick with what got you to where you're at.

"Having competitive cars and having support from [Hendrick Motorsports] and being able to look at their data and talk to their drivers is what got me into victory lane on Sunday. It's hard to run from that, you know.

"But at the same time, at this point and at this time, there isn't a clear opportunity there. So we'll have to see how that plays out."

Keselowski is currently in his second full season in the Nationwide series after finishing third in the championship last year. He drives for Dale Earnhardt Jr's team, which is Hendrick Motorsports' arm in the second-tier series.

He actually competed twice this year for Hendrick at Cup level, racing first at Las Vegas and then at Texas and is scheduled to compete for them again next weekend at Darlington and in a further four races at the wheel of the #25 car.

However he is still unsure about how many more races he will do for Phoenix Racing this year.

"You know that schedule was changing every week before I won so it's still changing every week," he said. "Originally we were going to run here at Richmond and that didn't work out. A couple of weeks ago that actually got cancelled.

"As far as knowing locked in what all the rest of my races are I do not know. There's a couple that I would like to run that we just haven't figured out how to run them. I'm trying to run Watkins Glen but we don't have that figured out."

If Keselowski ends up getting a full-time drive in the Sprint Cup series for next year he is unlikely to be considered a contender for Rookie of the Year honours due to the number of races he is set to enter this season. A driver cannot contest more than seven races in his previous year in order to be considered a rookie.