North Wilkesboro Turning Point: RFK enters title picture, and which All-Star will get their game on?

Before the race at Kansas Speedway, we asked in this space: "Gibbs, Hendrick … and who else?" Our answer might've come in Sunday's thriller at Darlington Raceway. Positioned as one of the teams riding the most second-half momentum into this past offseason, RFK Racing came out of the gates in 2024 a little ... flat. No. 17 driver Chris Buescher and No. 6 driver/co-owner Brad Keselowski combined for just one top 10 through the first three races after many had pegged them both as potential early winners, with each of the first two races employing the superspeedway style of racing -- long RFK's specialty. In the time since, there have been spurts of 2023-like runs; Keselowski turning in back-to-back top fives at Phoenix and Bristol, with Buescher also landing a runner-up and P7 in those races before adding another pair of top 10s in the next two weeks. Then some more hits and misses for each over the following month ... but now? The duo looks like, at the midpoint of the regular season, Ford's best shot at the 2024 Cup Series Championship. And together, they have a good one. Neither has yet to crack the top 10 in points -- they're currently 11th and 12th after the 2012 champ's win Sunday at Darlington -- but is there another organization beyond Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing right now that you can confidently see a path to the Championship 4 for its full lineup of drivers? Plenty can happen from here, but RFK might be the only other one, albeit with just a two-driver stable. With Keselowski, once a perennial contender to reach the Championship 4 and a two-time visitor, back to his winning ways and Buescher rounding into an extremely formidable veteran force -- that, apparently, should not be trifled with -- RFK appears to have widened the title picture considerably. The most interesting part? The early-season woes may not have been the team searching for answers but rather things going according to plan. MORE: Keselowski, crew fly the flag after streak-snapping triumph: ‘It’s a heck of a ride’ “We took a pretty big step back over the offseason. It was with a lot of intentionality in a couple critical categories," Keselowski said in his post-race press conference Sunday. "We paid for that dearly to start the year and kind of lost some performance. But it was in the name of being able to do this right here: Win races honest and be competitive, and the two steps forward are just now being realized. It never comes as quick as you want it to. It’s a tedious, painful process that takes a deep grind at all levels, whether that’s the driver level, the organizational level, the pit crew level. But that grind is worth it when you have moments like this. I surely appreciate it.” And, surely, the plan is to win the 2024 championship. Perhaps that goes accordingly, too.