Denny Hamlin’s Six-Word Message to Brad Keselowski Mirrors His Own NASCAR Struggle

With 22 races done in the season, Sunday’s race has finally led many, if not most, in the NASCAR community to believe that RFK is here to compete. While there have been tangible improvements in the team’s results, it was a win that the outfit desperately needed to make a statement, and Chris Buescher provided just that. Team owner and driver Brad Keselowski too had an impressive showing, finishing P6 and extending the gap from the playoff cut-off.

After the race, JGR driver Denny Hamlin, also in a similar seat as Keselowski as a driver-owner, hailed the 2012 Cup champion and congratulated his team on achieving so much in a limited time frame.

Denny Hamlin can relate to “tough” challenge Brad Keselowski has to face

Hamlin finished second behind Buescher and was impressive on a weekend where most of the talk still lingered around his incident with Kyle Larson from Pocono last week.

When asked if he appreciated what Keselowski has achieved with RFK, the #11 driver said, “No question about it, it’s tough. It is tough to go against some of the four-car operations with, I mean, for us they have five times more personnel. You know, for RFK, they have twice as much personnel as them, so it’s hard, it’s really really hard to win and I can appreciate what the #6 and #17 did out there today, especially in a year where you know, you guys we’ve even been talking about the struggles of Ford, they showed up and they showed up in a really fast way.”

Denny Hamlin clearly knows what he is talking about, considering the similarities 23XI Racing shares with RFK this season. Both teams have one driver (Buescher for RFK and Reddick for 23XI) who has locked himself in the playoffs with a win, with the other driver (Keselowski and Bubba Wallace) also sitting with a relative cushion above the cut-off line.

Brad Keselowski sees only an upward direction for the team to go

After the race, Keselowski showered praise on Buescher for his execution and also acknowledged the improvements the team has made over the course of their journey. The #6 driver said, “We led a lot of laps with both cars. Neither cars we started up front, drove through and great job with the Pit crews, and just a lot to be proud of today.”

“Of course, I want to win as a driver but just happy that we’re as competitive as we are and we just want to keep on building and keep getting more competitive every week.”

As for what the team targets in the immediate future, he added while its nice to get one car locked into the playoffs, they’re targeting more wins, a place where they “need to be.”