For the second year in a row, Brad Keselowski endured a disappointing outing at the Ambetter Health 400. He ended the race in 39th position in Atlanta last Sunday, sliding further from his 33rd place finish in 2024. This year, his misfortune was compounded by a mid-race crash with Chase Elliott toward the end of Stage 2.
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Elliott, after bouncing off the wall due to what initially looked like a tire blowout, could not regain control of his car. He collided with the wall again and swept up the #6 car driven by Keselowski, along with Corey LaJoie. Could Keselowski have managed to avoid being taken out by Elliott’s car?
Reflecting on the incident, Kaselowski admitted that split-second decisions are what makes or breaks a race. And he did go by the feel of it, but got caught.
“There’s, like, a million of those decisions during one of these races, and you just try to get a feel for it and I guessed wrong. It’s just intense racing. It’s great racing. It’s fun to be a part of. Just hate we didn’t come out on top,” Keselowski remarked after getting released from the infield care center following the crash.
Brad could have easily blamed Elliott for the incident, but he chose not to. Instead, he provided his own account of the events.
“I got up to the top 10 and the restart there, it looked like someone got into [Chase Elliott] and put him in the fence. I slowed for that, lost a bunch of spots, and then a little later down, it appears he broke a toe link. I saw it initially, I started to go, and it popped right in front of me. I had nowhere to go and broke the radiator,” narrated Keselowski.
Incidents which led to Keselowski’s crash
With a mere 10 laps remaining in Stage 2, Elliott was running in P11. He was navigating the high lane through Turns 3 and 4 amidst a tight three-wide race, with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Chase Briscoe jockeying for position to his left.
As Briscoe’s car drifted up the track, it nudged Stenhouse’s #47 Chevrolet, catapulting Elliott into the SAFER barrier. The collision snapped Elliott’s right-rear toe link, compromising his control over the vehicle.
At the end of the sequence, as they crossed the start/finish line, Elliott’s car veered sideways, making contact with LaJoie’s #1 and Keselowski’s #6 Fords.
Although both Elliott and LaJoie managed to coax their battered vehicles to pit road, Keselowski was not as fortunate. His car had to be towed to the garage area, where it was repaired under the new Damaged Vehicle Policy regulations for the 2025 season.
The race concluded with Elliott in P20, while LaJoie and Keselowski, whose crews assessed the damages as too extensive for repair, were forced to retire. They finished P38 and P39 respectively.
Keselowski seems to have taken the crash and the disappointing finish in its stride. The RFK Racing co-owner/driver looked at the incident as a by-product of hard racing, and absolved Elliott of any fault.
