Sure, it’s been a miserable season for Brad Keselowski. But Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway was the perfect time to change all of that.
Keselowski is tied for second on Talladega’s all-time wins list (six) with Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. The only driver ahead of them is The Intimidator, Dale Earnhardt Sr.
So who cares if Keselowski hadn’t led a lap all season? Who cares if he didn’t have a top-10 finish? Talladega, it seemed, would be the perfect place to turn his year around.
Bookmakers in Las Vegas agreed; the 2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion entered the race with the second-best odds of winning.
And yet there was Keselowski on Lap 42, stranded in the infield grass after a crash. He was having a fine race and was fourth in line for the group of cars he was pitting with during the first pit stops of the day, but it appeared the trio in front of him slowed more than he anticipated. Keselowski darted to the right but collided with Kyle Busch and then an oncoming Ryan Blaney.
Suddenly, his day was over. Another disappointment, another finish outside the top 25 — his seventh in 10 races this year.
The NASCAR data analyst Daniel Cespedes noted Keselowski’s average finish of 26.1 is not just the worst start of his career; it’s the worst 10-race stretch he’s had over 17 years of Cup racing.
“I hate that it ruined not just our day, but several other people’s days,” Keselowski said after Talladega. “I don’t think I could do anything different.”
No one — absolutely no one — is ever out of the playoffs until the checkered flag waves at the end of Race No. 26. All it takes is one victory to secure a berth in the 16-driver field, and even the most miserable of seasons can be salvaged with one great moment.
Just look at Harrison Burton, who last summer won at Daytona to jump from 34th in the Cup standings — last among full-time competitors — straight into the playoffs.
Keselowski, a future Hall of Famer with 36 career Cup Series victories, can certainly pull off a victory nearly any week. His cars at the team he co-owns, RFK Racing, have shown speed this season with teammates Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece. Keselowski won just last season at Darlington Raceway, which isn’t a track where flukes happen.
Except actually winning is easier said than done, and Talladega would have been a great place to snatch a much-needed victory while relieving some pressure. Instead, Keselowski is still 32nd in the point standings and far out of a playoff berth if he doesn’t win one of the next 16 races.
And while there are still 16 more chances, how realistic is it that Keselowski would suddenly go win at intermediate tracks like the next four points races — Texas Motor Speedway, Kansas Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway and Nashville Superspeedway? How realistic is it that he would win on a road course, which accounts for another four races before the playoffs?
You get the point. The opportunities dwindle quickly.
That’s what made a superspeedway like Talladega so tempting for Keselowski to target after finishing second there in both races last season. So now what? Is Keselowski in must-win territory, with 83 points and 17 drivers separating him from a playoff spot should he not find victory lane?
For his part, Keselowski acknowledged in a meeting with reporters last week that while 2025 wasn’t his best start, “I’ve got my eternal optimist glasses on and I see the potential.”
“The potential for this team is higher than any team I’ve had the last four or five years, and we just have to recognize it,” he said. “There’s a lot of talent and a lot of fresh faces and the mistakes that come with that. We have to clean that up and recognize our potential.”
“The potential for this team is higher than any team I’ve had the last four or five years,” Brad Keselowski says, “and we just have to recognize it.” (Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
The biggest change was at the crew chief position. Keselowski hired Jeremy Bullins, his former Team Penske crew chief, to reunite a successful, winning pairing that was only broken up when Keselowski left to become RFK’s co-owner/driver. At the time, Bullins was still under contract to Penske and was unable to follow Keselowski to the new organization.
But although there were high hopes to start the season, the team hasn’t found success yet for whatever reason.
“Hopefully, soon we’ll recognize the two steps forward with all the changes we made, but we definitely took a step backward in the process,” Keselowski said. “I feel like that can strike at any moment, and we just need to trust our process.”
The problem for teams in similar positions in the past is the regular season can quickly slip away. And that can be said even for teams who expect to win regularly; three of last season’s Championship 4 drivers (Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick) have yet to score a victory this season, nor have expected winners like Chase Elliott, Ross Chastain and Chase Briscoe.
But as Keselowski noted with Logano’s example last season, all that matters is catching fire at the right time. Logano was 14th in the standings before he won an improbable overtime race at Nashville last summer, then parlayed it into a championship.
“The current format, for better or worse, doesn’t particularly value the start to the season; it values the end of the season and a small amount in between,” Keselowski said. “In that case, you’re just looking to put together all the right pieces to get hot when it matters.
“Whether that’s right or wrong, it is the format, and over the years, I’ve come to better terms with that.”
Now Keselowski and his team just need to put it into practice.
(Top photo of Brad Keselowski after crashing in Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway: Jeff Robinson / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
