(Photo: Christopher Vargas | The Podium Finish)
LAS VEGAS — Brad Keselowski may not have advanced into the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, but he’s still ending the 2023 season on a solid note. Keselowski corraled a fourth-place finish Sunday afternoon at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the South Point 400.
The 39-year-old is still searching for his first win of the 2023 season to end his two-and-a-half-year winless streak for his first win as co-owner of RFK Racing. The winless streak nearly ended for Keselowski and the No. 6 team on Sunday, but the Rochester Hills, Michigan native was not able to pass Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell and Kyle Busch in the waning laps.
However, the weekend didn’t start as clean as it ended. Keselowski qualified 21st on Saturday afternoon, leaving him much to desire come race time. By the start of the South Point 400, the No. 6 team seemingly made great adjustments and Keselowski drove through the field. By the end of Stage 1, he made it up to third.
By Lap 118, Keselowski was out front, pacing the field to green after a caution for a loose wheel. The RFK driver maintained the lead until Lap 155 when Kyle Larson took over the lead with just 15 laps left in Stage 2. Over those final laps, Keselowski fell back to a fifth-place stage finish.
Stage 3 showed the same speed for Keselowski, but he didn’t have enough to contend for the win as Larson dominated and punched his ticket to the Championship 4.
“We just executed really well on pit road, with strategy and on restarts,” Keselowski explained. “We executed really well, but I feel like we needed a touch more speed and a few breaks to go our way to be able to win. Kyle [Larson] was just a little faster. If we were in front of him, I think we might have been able to hold him off, but he was just really fast.”
“We just weren’t as fast as the Nos. 5 [Larson] and the 20 [Christopher Bell] and then the 8 [Busch] there at the end … It was a really solid day. We executed on pit road really well and executed the restarts really well. That’s all we had.”
With three races to go, Keselowski is ninth in points, 25 ahead of Ross Chastain.
