NASCAR Cup Series
"The Potential is There": Josh Berry, Stewart-Haas Racing Seeing Improvements; Excited for Martinsville
Apr 4, 2024
Brad Keselowski is still seeking his first race win since moving to the RFK Racing team in 2022, but despite the lack of a win, Keselowski enjoyed a very good 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season, which saw him make the Playoffs, and finished eighth in the final NASCAR Cup Series championship standings.
Keselowski, 40, has been zeroing in on victory lane again in recent weeks as he has recorded two top-five finishes and three top-10s over the last four events. While he's found success, Keselowski is still staying focused on what it takes to build his No. 6 team into a consistent race-winning car, and overall, the two-car RFK Racing team.
"I just focus on the process not the outcome."
Keselowski continued, "I focus on doing all of the right things. Trying to help everyone I can, and obviously execute on my end. And when I'm not driving the race car being an assertive leader to help everyone else build the best they can. And then let the results speak for themselves. Just really process-focused. I don't get too high or too low."
While he knows he has been knocking on the door of a win over the last couple of seasons, Keselowski hasn't spent any time thinking about how it would feel to snap his current 105-race losing skid.
"I hesitate to always explain how I would feel in a moment that hasn't happened," the 2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion explained. But I can't see how it would be a bad thing."
RFK Racing was one of the great surprises of the 2023 season, as Chris Buescher scored three wins in the team's No. 17 Ford Mustang, and both drivers had long sustained Playoff runs. Keselowski says the team hasn't quite had the same strength early in this season, but they're starting to get things dialed in.
"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. Right now, they're dominant," Keselowski said. "They've won four of the last five or something to that effect. And they've won them all honest. They haven't really kind of stolen a race. They've had the speed throughout the whole race with one of their cars to just control it. And that's where I want to be.
"I want to see our team have the speed where we can control races. I thought towards the middle to end of last year, we had that a couple of times. Chris was able to capitalize with a win. I wasn't able to capitalize with a win, but I was able to score a lot of points, and make a strong Playoff push. That's where we want to be. We're not as strong as we were at that time, but it's on the tip of our tongue. And I want to go get that."
Keselowski is a two-time race winner at Martinsville Speedway (2017 spring and 2019 spring), and he has recorded 12 career top-five finishes and 17 top-10s throughout the course of his 28 NASCAR Cup Series starts at the track. The 0.526-mile paper clip in Virginia would be as good of a place as any for Keselowski to snag that elusive first win with RFK Racing.
Photo Credit: Jonathan McCoy, TobyChristie.com