Last week, before and after the Atlanta race, talk circulated around the garage about Brad Keselowski taking things one race at a time and whether he would strap in at Circuit of the Americas. Questions followed him from the hauler to pit road. Would he line up at COTA at all? And if he did, would his recovery from a right femur injury allow him to go the distance?
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The No. 6 team kept Joey Hand on standby, hedging its bets in case the plan went sideways. But a day before the main event at Circuit of the Americas, Keselowski put the rumors to rest. He said he had no intention of climbing out of his Ford Mustang for the road course event. The RFK Racing co-owner knew it would not be a walk in the park, but he had put in the work and was ready to see it through.
Keselowski started the race from 26th and brought the car home 20th, gaining 17 points in the process. But for a driver still recovering from a femur injury, it was a case of keeping the car on the road course track and stacking what he could. Teammate Ryan Preece voiced confidence in Keselowski’s resolve, saying the veteran would not treat competition as a Sunday drive. At COTA, Keselowski showed he was willing to take his lumps and press on.
Preece said during a Wednesday media teleconference, “I can appreciate it because the things that I’m going to put myself through to race, so is Brad. I’ve learned pretty quickly that he and I are very similar in the aspects of what we’re going to put ourselves through to compete and show others that we will do whatever it takes to race, to competitively attempt to win, and put our teams in position.”
“As a race car driver, what I see him doing every day, and then as a race car driver, like, you weren’t taking him out of that race car because you wouldn’t take me out of that race car,” he added.
And the RFK’s No. 60 Ford driver speaks from his own experience. Preece spent two seasons with SHR before the team shut down operations in 2024. But just before that, in 2023, during his first season with the #41 team, Preece was involved in a violent crash in the summer race at Daytona International Speedway, going airborne and flipping more than a dozen times in the air down the backstretch before the car came to rest upright.
He managed to climb out on his own and was taken to a hospital for evaluation. While he returned home the next day, one week later, when he returned, Preece’s eyes were swollen and blood-red from the impact. Still, he was back behind the wheel at Darlington Raceway.
Last weekend tested that mindset across the field. Preece was among several drivers, including Kyle Larson and AJ Allmendinger, who dealt with cool suit failures over 95 laps in the Texas heat at the 17-turn course. Even as conditions took a toll, Preece stayed the course and finished 18th, his best result at Circuit of the Americas in his past four starts there.
