MARTINSVILLE, Va. — RFK Racing announced Saturday morning that the organization has reached the next stage of its severance from driver and co-owner Brad Keselowski, freeing him to continue his driving career elsewhere and concluding his ownership ties.
News of their mutual agreement landed Saturday morning at Martinsville Speedway, site of Sunday’s Xfinity 500 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the next-to-last race of the NASCAR Cup Series season. The RFK statement also noted that Keselowski will continue as a “passive investor” with the team, bringing his roles in the competition department and governing board to an end.
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“We thank Brad for his many contributions to RFK Racing and wish him the best of luck with the remainder of his racing career,” the RFK statement concluded.
Keselowski, a two-time Martinsville winner, offered the first substantial update in nearly four weeks regarding his split from RFK Racing and his direction for the 2027 season during a Saturday morning media availability, scheduled just a half-hour after the team’s announcement. He acknowledged that the recently struck agreement had swayed the potential tenor of his news conference, and he showed crossed-out sections in his prepared remarks as he stepped down from the Press Pass desk after a wide-ranging 35-minute media session.
Both Keselowski and RFK president Chip Bowers had addressed the parting of ways at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, four days after the team’s Sept. 29 announcement that the 42-year-old driver would leave the team’s No. 6 Ford at season’s end. Bowers indicated Keselowski had reached the end of a five-year driving contract, and that the organization was ready for him to turn his primary focus toward competition leadership at RFK. Bowers also said Keselowski intended to keep driving in 2027 and potentially beyond. The two parties differed on this matter, and apparently on several other topics in reporting from The Athletic that surfaced two weeks ago.
The former Cup Series champion (2012) said Saturday that those differences “were not adversarial,” and he confirmed news first reported by the Sports Business Journal that he had attempted to purchase RFK Racing outright, a bid that was rejected by the other ownership stakeholders — team founder Jack Roush and Fenway Sports Group.
Keselowski said Saturday that negotiations for renewing his driving contract began with RFK Racing after last season’s end, and he had expressed an intent to continue his roles as a driver and competition leader. “Unfortunately, what became very clear in the negotiation is my partners saw that differently, and we were not able to come to agreement,” Keselowski said, noting that their positions created “a strong impasse.”
Keselowski said the current deal had been a month in the making but was reached after clearing “a number of hurdles” approximately one hour before he met with reporters. Moving forward with his release granted, Keselowski used his time to let prospective team owners know about his newfound availability.
“There are a number of opportunities in front of me in the Cup Series for 2027 and beyond. There’s no doubt about that,” Keselowski said. “I’ve had a number of outreaches. I’m not going to get into the details of what those are at this time, but I’m eager and willing to execute one of them and to be part of the 2027 season as a manager in NASCAR and a driver. As I said before, I truly believe I have what it takes to do that at the highest level with winning races and contending for championships, both as a driver and a team leader. So, I’m certainly not ready to retire or walk away in any means from this sport.”
Keselowski said he has three steps to complete before the 2027 season arrives, and first and foremost among those is landing a Cup Series ride — opportunities he was not able to pursue before the verbal agreement was made final. The Michigan native said that any potential landing spot did not necessarily have to include an ownership stake, though he indicated “that it is something I do value, for sure,” while noting the bullish interest in the sport for potential owners to invest in. He also left the door open to returning to his roots — as a driver and owner — in the Craftsman Truck Series, saying that striving for an unprecedented “Triple Crown” sweep of NASCAR’s national series championships carried a certain appeal.
His other two offseason objectives included securing business partners and sponsors, which he said he cannot contractually take with him from RFK, and selling his 20% stake in the organization — a level that he reached “in the last few months.”
Keselowski said he is now free to entertain offers from other teams and manufacturers across any NASCAR series. That includes Dodge, which has been linked to a 2027 return in NASCAR’s top division and which celebrated alongside Keselowski during his Cup Series title march 14 years ago.
“I would say that everything is on the table,” Keselowski said. “I have not had a meaningful discussion with Dodge or Ram. I’m certainly very open-minded to it, alongside all of the OEMs. I haven’t given up on a relationship with Ford in the future as well, along with the other two OEMs of Chevrolet and Toyota. Everything is on the table right now for me.”
Keselowski missed out on The Chase presented by Mobil 1 postseason field this year, placing 18th at the end of the Cup Series’ regular season, while teammates Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece advanced. The 2026 campaign has been an eventful one, marked by an offseason leg injury that kept him out of the preseason Clash exhibition and hobbled him with a walking cane in the season’s early stages, plus the departure of crew chief Jeremy Bullins, who will make the shift to Legacy Motor Club in 2027. His winless streak now stands at 93 races since he last prevailed at Darlington Raceway in the 2024 Goodyear 400, notching his only Cup victory under the RFK banner.
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Despite the uncertainty, Keselowski has shown signs of going out with a trend-bucking flourish. With Buescher and Preece joining in, Keselowski’s group implemented a rogue Stage 1 strategy last weekend at Talladega Superspeedway, countering the field’s fuel-saving gambit and turning the RFK trio into crowd darlings. Though Keselowski shared the credit, he laughed at the suggestion that the bold Talladega move was a final blaze of glory in the third-to-last race of the season.
“I will say it had a lot to do with a team of people that was willing to make a move that was different and the culture that comes within that to not be afraid of the consequences if it didn’t succeed,” Keselowski said. “I appreciate the gutsiness to do that. It didn’t happen just as a complete accident. There were a lot of really smart people studying a lot of data and analyzing the situation in real time and then having the guts to make a call.”
Said Preece: “That will never happen again, I promise you. People, instead of being tunnel vision on the task at hand in the moment, will see things differently.”
Buescher ranks 16th in the standings — one spot behind Preece — as he makes his 400th Cup Series start on Sunday. While Buescher has been winless this year, Preece has broken out with a victory in the preseason Chase exhibition in February and a clutch win in the regular-season finale at Daytona International Speedway.
Both drivers insisted that the ownership shift hasn’t produced a distraction.
“Right now, certainly there’s change with that news, but where we’re at, we have been able to get into The Chase and trying to figure out how to drive forward through that,” said Buescher. “The Chase has not been as competitive as we would have liked, and to be honest with you, that has been priority. That has been where we’ve been at, trying to figure out how to make that part of it more successful right now, and let the offseason stuff come around in the offseason, which is extremely close, right? So yeah, I mean, there’s change with it; there always will be, but I think everybody’s been able to stay pretty focused on what’s immediately ahead of us right now.”
Though the RFK Racing chapter of Keselowski’s career is about to close after Sunday’s 500-lapper here and next weekend’s season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, his legacy will include returning a storied team to its winning ways. The three-driver lineup has yielded seven Cup Series wins in his tenure, and Keselowski says he’ll continue to show his support for Buescher and Preece after his departure.
“First of all, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Ryan and Chris,” Keselowski said. “Both of those guys are stand-up guys and phenomenal race car drivers. I feel incredibly fortunate to have those guys as teammates and as a part of RFK’s racing story. They’re going to do well for years to come. Their attitude and work ethic is underappreciated in my opinion by a lot of people, and their success is not a surprise to me. I feel grateful and thankful that I got to work with them and help them realize their potential, but, to be clear, they’ve done the work and they deserve the credit. As far as my future with those two go, as a passive investor by the very definition, there really isn’t one, but I clearly will always be rooting and cheering for their success.”