Brad Keselowski is currently in his third season as a driver and co-owner of RFK Racing. The former Cup Series champion was tasked with taking the team back to its yesteryear glory in 2021 and he has carried it a long way to that effect. As the outfit speeds to retain its strong momentum from 2023, the goal right now for Keselowski is to make it match the performance of Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR).
Advertisement
JGR has been the most dominant team in the ongoing season. It has won all three short-track races that have gone down so far and seen two of its four drivers fix their spots in the playoffs. The team’s achievements have not gone unnoticed in the eyes of RFK Racing’s top brass. As a team owner himself, Keselowski takes the JGR dominance as a positive example to be inspired by.
Talking in a round table discussion at the NASCAR production facility on Tuesday, he detailed his views. “Right now, I’m focused on Martinsville and what it’s going to take to have the lap time and speed to compete with the Gibbs cars,” he said. “I think they’re dominant. They’ve won, is it four of the last five or something to that effect? And they’ve won them all honest.”
What seems to have impressed him the most is the speed that the JGR Toyotas have displayed. He pointed out Christopher Bell’s excellence in particular and said that the driver had significantly more speed than the rest of the field over the last few weeks. “That’s the level that I think … if we had our execution with their speed, we’d be winning multiple races,” he concluded.
Keselowski’s faith in his approach to reach the level of Joe Gibbs Racing
Keselowski has now gone 105 races without reaching the victory lane. While it is reasonable for any driver to try changing their approach to racing in the light of such drought, he has complete confidence in his methods. “I just focus on the process, not the outcome,” he said.
“I’m focused on doing all the right things, trying to help everybody I can and obviously execute on my end, and when I’m not driving the race car, being a servant leader to help everybody else build the best they can. Then you kind of let the results speak for themselves.” He has won twice on the short track previously and heads to it with 3 top-ten finishes in his last four starts.
His teammate Chris Buescher has found the victory lane more often than he has in recent years. However, his record in Martinsville isn’t notable. Safe to say, it could take quite a few weeks deeper into the season for RFK Racing to threaten JGR with their Ford Mustangs.
