In the midst of his 14th year full time at the NASCAR Cup Series level, Brad Keselowski, the 2012 series champion, knows it takes every ounce to consistently have the best performance in pursuit of a title — especially in a time where teams are still trying to find their footing with the Next Gen cars.
According to Keselowski, things like playoff urgency, a more equal mechanical playing field and other vital factors all play a role in the fiery racing on display each week.
“The NASCAR Next Gen car is a pretty good shift in the paradigm of racing and the margins of competition are lower and everybody is searching for any advantage they can find,” Keselowski said in an interview with NASCAR.com. “Some of that comes with some really difficult ethical decisions on how you wanna compete. But it is the reality of the racing that I think NASCAR expects to see and its fans expect to see. We’d all like to have the racing where it’s super respectful and so forth, but I don’t know if that’s really possible given the landscape of NASCAR with the Next Gen car and the playoffs and everything else.
“All the formats, and the layouts of the cars, the stages and all that and the yellow flags — all of this is made to make the racing super intense and to really throw respect out the window and it’s working.”
Respect, or lack thereof, seems to be one of the frequent themes throughout the garage, most notably from Kyle Busch at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and it’s not a topic of conversation limited to on-track competition.
Earlier this week, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and JTG Daughterty Racing confirmed the Daytona 500 winning pit crew for the No. 47 team would be heading over to the No. 17 RFK Racing Ford and Chris Buescher.
For Stenhouse, who is on a roll with three top-eight finishes in the last four races, the development was a disappointing one. He made that clear.
Since the pit crews for the No. 47 are fielded by RFK Racing, Keselowski discussed the change and mentioned that it was a minor issue that Stenhouse could have reached out about, personally.
‘Yeah, I wish he would have talked to me if he had a problem,” Keselowski said in an at-track interview Saturday. “I’m really proud of the pit crews we have at RFK, we don’t just do the 6 and the 17. As you know, we do the 47 and the 38 as well, which is a super intentional move to add more depth to what we have on pit road and to be able to amortize the costs. And you know, I think over the years we’ve really provided some really good pit crews for other teams and it serves really everybody you know, to be able to use those resources across multiple teams.
“But in the 47 car I think we’ve provided some really great pit crews for them I would say, won Daytona 500 this year and then the 34 car two years ago, so lots to be proud of some really good people there but we’re always making adjustments. Always trying to get better.”
Keselowski also mentioned that adjustments to crew members are made fluidly throughout the season and based on individual chemistry as much as the crew performing well as a unit.
“We made adjustments for that team to start the year, made adjustments for that team last week and made adjustments for that team this week. So not really sure why it’s a story this week. I guess it is so we’re gonna continue to make adjustments to field the best pit crews we can across all four teams that we have on any given week. And you know, I think our intentions are sincere in doing that.”
Both pit crews will have their first post-swap test in Sunday’s GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway (3 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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As one of the sport’s integral driver-owners, Keselowski realizes the difficulty of decision-making at the highest level. From crew changes to diverse track types, the 39-year-old veteran realizes the challenge of finding balance within his own team and organization. And despite his decade’s worth of knowledge, the sport is an ever-changing landscape.
For example, the most diverse premier series schedule in quite some time.
“There’s a significant difference in the continuity of the schedule from today to when I joined the sport as a Cup driver 12 or 13 years ago,” Keselowski said. “You know, I feel like we had too much continuity at that time, and today you could argue we don’t have enough. But that’s probably subjective. It’s certainly a different challenge.”
But so far, both RFK cars have risen to the challenge and made big strides from this point last season — Keselowski’s inaugural season with the group. And though they’re still searching for their first win, both cars are in position to point their way into the playoffs.
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“But that’s not where we want to be,” Keselowski told NASCAR.com. “We want to be winning races. Winning races is really the key in this sport and I feel like there’s been a few weeks where we’ve been in position and a few weeks where we haven’t. That’s kinda frustrating but this [upcoming] stretch is a good stretch for us. Talladega, specifically. We just need to go execute these races.
“If we can do that, we’ll keep ourselves in a good position. I think we can win.”