NASCAR Cup Series drivers race mostly on asphalt, with a few events held on concrete surfaces. In fact, of the 26 tracks that hold Cup races, just four are concrete: Bristol, Dover, Martinsville, and Sunday’s host, Nashville Superspeedway.
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While fans may think a track is a track, no matter what the surface compound is, drivers will disagree. Veteran Brad Keselowski is one of those drivers who feel each of the four concrete tracks offers significantly different challenges from their asphalt counterparts.
Of Keselowski’s 36 career Cup wins, six have come on concrete tracks. However, he has yet to reach Victory Lane at Nashville. In fact, the co-owner of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing has yet to earn a top-10 finish in four prior Cup Series starts there — something he hopes to change on Sunday.
“We have had some really good runs at Nashville [but just] haven’t been able to get the finish on the Cup side,” Keselowski said.
Even so, Nashville still holds a special place in Keselowski’s heart: He earned his first career win at the 2008 Xfinity Series race, driving for Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports. In 10 overall Xfinity races at Nashville, Keselowski earned two wins and seven top-five finishes.
So, 17 years after his first career NASCAR win there, can the Michigan native achieve success again on Nashville’s concrete surface, winning there for the first time in the Cup Series?
“What I have always enjoyed about it is that the concrete is just really, really unforgiving and takes a lot of discipline,” Keselowski said. “When you get sideways the car is much more difficult to recover, generally. I just think it is a different type of racing than asphalt racing.”
Keselowski has three career Cup wins on the concrete surface at Bristol, and two at Martinsville — both essentially half-mile tracks — and one on the mile-long track at Dover. Nashville is the only concrete track over one mile in length, at 1.333 miles.
“It is something different, interesting, that kind of breaks up the schedule a little bit,” Keselowski said. “We have to survive the restarts and bring speed. I think we can do both of those.”
A strong finish at Nashville imperative for Keselowski
Fate has not done any favors for Keselowski in the four previous Cup races at Nashville: Other than a P11 showing in 2023, his other three finishes have been 23rd or worse.
But he’s hoping he comes into Music City with momentum. His fifth-place finish last Sunday in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte was his best showing thus far in 2025. It was his first top 10 finish of the year.
“It is an exciting time for us, outside of looking at where we are in the point standings,” said Keselowski, who is 32nd in the standings. Only the top 30 drivers at the end of the first 26 races are eligible for the playoffs.
“We need to build off of [the Charlotte momentum] and incrementally inch our way up to being able to win,” Keselowski said. “I think we are really close to that right now. Trying not to jump the shark on that is important. But last week was a really positive moment for us.”
He said the final run gave him confidence, noting they passed at least half a dozen cars. Keselowski ran the fastest laps and did a lot of positive things that made him feel they’re capable of winning.
