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“I Just Want to Win”: Brad Keselowski Rues Second Place Finish as Chase Elliott ‘Doubles Up’ With Alex Bowman to Win at Atlanta

Jerry Bonkowski
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NASCAR Cup Series driver Brad Keselowski (6) during practice and qualifying for the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway.

Aug 10, 2024; Richmond, Virginia, USA; NASCAR Cup Series driver Brad Keselowski (6) during practice and qualifying for the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway. Mandatory Credit: Peter Casey-Imagn Images

It was a good news-bad news night for Brad Keselowski in Saturday’s Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway in Georgia.

The good news is he earned his best finish of the season, finishing second to race winner Chase Elliott. In doing so, Keselowski moved up from 30th to 27th in the NASCAR Cup standings with eight races now remaining to make the playoffs.

The bad news is Keselowski is so far back points-wise that he knows — and pretty much everybody else knows — that he needs a win to make the playoffs.

“He (Elliott) just had the 48 (Alex Bowman) behind him giving him a huge push and (there was) nothing I could do to cover that,” Keselowski said after the race. “We had our cars linked up at RFK. We could do the same thing and we lost that, and then it was just kind of a two-on-one. I fought as hard as I could.”

Keselowski led 46 laps in the race, second-most of all 40 drivers entered. For quite a while, he had great support from his RFK Racing teammates, Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece.

Unfortunately, his teammates faded late in the race (Buescher finished 9th, Preece 15th), leaving Keselowski by himself to fight the big, bad Hendrick 1-2 punch of Elliott and Bowman.

“The cars get too big of runs and it ain’t over until it’s over,” Keselowski said. “Every time I got the lead, I couldn’t seem to get everything to go our way. If we could have got a yellow or anything there, it certainly would have been helpful, but that didn’t happen.”

With eight races left to make the playoffs, Keselowski knows that the likely only way he’ll make the 10-race playoffs is if he wins one of the remaining races coming up. He echoed the exact thoughts after the race as well.

“I don’t think about that (the playoffs), I just want to win,” he said. “The 48 (Bowman) and 9 (Elliott) were able to double up on me and there wasn’t anything I could do.” 

Later, Keselowski added, “Once the two Hendrick cars linked up, it was going to be hard to make anything happen.”

Post Edited By:Abhishek Ramesh

About the author

Jerry Bonkowski

Jerry Bonkowski

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Jerry Bonkowski is a veteran sportswriter who has worked full-time for many of the top media outlets in the world, including USA Today (15 years), ESPN.com (4+ years), Yahoo Sports (4 1/2 years), NBCSports.com (8 years) and others. He has covered virtually every major professional and collegiate sport there is, including the Chicago Bulls' six NBA championships (including heavy focus on Michael Jordan), the Chicago Bears Super Bowl XX-winning season, the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs World Series championships, two of the Chicago Blackhawks' NHL titles, Tiger Woods' PGA Tour debut, as well as many years of beat coverage of the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA for USA Today. But Jerry's most notable achievement has been covering motorsports, most notably NASCAR, IndyCar, NHRA drag racing and Formula One. He has had a passion for racing since he started going to watch drag races at the old U.S. 30 Dragstrip (otherwise known as "Where the Great Ones Run!") in Hobart, Indiana. Jerry has covered countless NASCAR, IndyCar and NHRA races and championship battles over the years. He's also the author of a book, "Trading Paint: 101 Great NASCAR Debates", published in 2010 (and he's hoping to soon get started on another book). Away from sports, Jerry was a fully sworn part-time police officer for 20 years, enjoys reading and music (especially "hair bands" from the 1980s and 1990s), as well as playing music on his electric keyboard, driving (fast, of course!), spending time with Cyndee his wife of nearly 40 years, the couple's three adult children and three grandchildren (with more to come!), and his three dogs -- including two German Shepherds and an Olde English Bulldog who thinks he's a German Shepherd.. Jerry still gets the same excitement of seeing his byline today as he did when he started in journalism as a 15-year-old high school student. He is looking forward to writing hundreds, if not thousands, of stories in the future for TheSportsRush.com, as well as interacting with readers.

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