Denny Hamlin Makes Scary Brad Keselowski Claim After Driver Ends 110-Race Winless Streak

The Darlington race on Sunday was a relief for Brad Keselowski and a serious realization for Denny Hamlin. There may be several teams in the NASCAR Cup Series but only a select few are considered title favorites every year. Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing is one of them, but the veteran now believes that Keselowski’s RFK Racing could also be coming into the fray. This won’t be good news for the championship hopefuls considering how good the 2012 Cup Series champion can drive with a competitive car.

On a recent episode of the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin reveals that he never considered RFK Racing a serious threat to challenging race wins. That was a bit unexpected since the team won three races last year, one of which was 1-2. However, their playoff form was disappointing, which is probably what Hamlin had in mind. But all of those conceptions have just changed drastically.

“This was by far in my opinion the best race-winning speed that #6 team has shown. I just feel as though in my gut that they took advantage of this opportunity while they had some better…had some good finishes between Richmond of last year and now. I just, I never really saw them as a big threat to win the race until they showed the speed that they did this weekend,” he said.

DH gives props to Brad, the No. 6 team and everyone over at RFK. 👏 pic.twitter.com/CGklCEVLG5

— Dirty Mo Media (@DirtyMoMedia) May 13, 2024

RFK Racing became the first Ford team to win a race this year and some people could see it coming. Rumors are that the RFK cars got some sort of an upgrade from the shop which has been paying dividends.

The rumored engine upgrades are the reason behind Brad Keselowski’s success

Brad Keselowski has performed fairly well in the last few races and Chris Buescher almost won last weekend at Kansas. They might not have been much in the spotlight but RFK racing was gradually getting better race by race. Teams will certainly start paying attention now as they look to upset the big boys of the NASCAR Cup Series on a more frequent basis. Hamlin believes that the new upgrades have seen the cars reach such high levels of performance.

“And so, now you would say man, these could be guys that contend on a more regular basis for wins because they’ve figured something out to get a little bit better. I know a lot of the talk in the garage is that they’ve gotten some engine upgrades and that has helped things,” he added.

With still a large part of the regular season remaining, the team would do everything possible to get both cars into the playoffs and the way they performed at Darlington, it could happen sooner rather than later.