Brad Keselowski drives to a solid top-10 finish in Kansas (Photo: Cole Penning | The Podium Finish)
KANSAS CITY, KS. – Brad Keselowski brought home a ninth place finish Sunday afternoon following the Hollywood Casino 400.
At a track that has had a notable amount of recent success for Toyota drivers, the weekend started with respectable speed for Keselowski, qualifying 12th on Saturday morning in the No. 6 RFK Racing car. After the drop of the green flag, Keselowski and his team were able to get even more speed out of their car, and the 39-year-old drove to an eighth place Stage 1 finish.
By Lap 163 of the 268 lap race, Keselowski was able to fight his way to the lead, winning Stage 2. Keselowski was able to hold on to the lead in the opening laps of Stage 3 until Lap 187 when Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick were both able to get by the Rochester Hills, Michigan native.
RFK Racing, the team in which Keselowski both drives for and is part owner, has been finding their stride and managing solid finishes consistently between Keselowski and Chris Buescher in the No. 17 in the summer months. Buescher has three points paying race wins in 2023, all coming in July or August. Keselowski does not have a win this season, however, he has had a string of solid top-10 finishes also throughout the summer. Before the race at Kansas, Keselowski touched on what he felt the keys to his teams recent success have been.
“Some really good investments in people and equipment,” Keselowski said. “I think it’s hard to pick one, they kind of go together, we can hire the best engineer in the world but if we don’t give them a laptop that works it doesn’t really matter, right? All of those things have to come together and I think we’ve made some smart investments, I don’t think we’ve been wasteful but we’ve really zoomed in on the things we need to be successful and attacked them.”
Keselowski also mentioned how that makes him feel going into Bristol next week, at track that saw RFK produce solid runs at in 2022.
“It’s a track that I’m excited and nervous to go to at the same time,” Keselowski said. “I’m excited because we were so good there last year and we know we’ve only made the program stronger but to be successful in this sport takes a certain level of humility and the importance of humility is humility drives that continuous improvement that I think you need to keep up with the times and the changes that come with them.”
“So,” Keselowski added, ” You get nervous about having a track that you like because it’s almost like you become overconfident and you stop working on everything you need to be working on. Certainly trying to check that, but obviously Bristol is a track that we were really strong at, I had some really good runs at, probably should have won the race there, but last fall but there’s some redemption on our mind.”
