Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Jack Link’s 500 Media Availability
Thursday, April 24, 2025
Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 6 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse, is the winningest active driver at Talladega Superspeedway with six career NASCAR Cup Series victories. Keselowski was invited by NASCAR to meet with motorsports media at the NASCAR Production Facility in Concord, NC, earlier this week to talk about his season so far.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 6 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse – DO YOU GO INTO THIS WEEKEND FEELING LIKE YOUR SEASON COULD TURN AROUND IMMEDIATELY OR HAS THE RACING CHANGED TO WHERE THAT CAN’T HAPPEN? “I still think Talladega is one of those racetracks where anybody can win. Next Gen has been a little bit fickle at Talladega in the way that it values different things than the car before did. It seems to really value the last pit stop and executing that at a very high level and then the fuel saving stuff, which I think is gonna be the word everybody hates after this weekend. So, it’s different. It’s a different type of racing than what Talladega was four or five years ago before the Next Gen car, but I think that’s part of what makes Talladega special is just how the racing there has evolved at least a half dozen times since I’ve been in Cup and it’s different eras of racing that values different things. I appreciate that. There are certainly types that you like more than others of racing there, but I do think that it’s a place where I think of the 39 entries, 33 of them have a realistic shot of winning.”
DO YOU STILL FEEL YOU CAN CONTROL YOUR DESTINY AND MAKE THOSE MOVES THAT TAKES EVERYBODY’S BREATH AWAY AND YOU CAN WIN THERE, OR HAS IT CHANGED WITH THE CAR? “Yes and no. This car is more reliant on getting a physical push, where we went through an era where the cars were not quite as reliant on that. This car has shown time over time, I guess over this six race sample size at Talladega and arguably over a few races at Daytona, that really it’s about the front two lanes and how they are able to get off of turn four and the physical contact between the cars. And how that all plays out is really dictated by the third, fourth, fifth and sixth-place cars, so I feel a little less in control. Last year, we finished second in both races and I felt like coming off of turn four I was in position to win both of them, and the pushes just didn’t come from where I needed them to come from. It didn’t materialize behind me, so I didn’t have control over those pieces. I had control over where I was at and felt like I was in the most likely position to win the race, but it didn’t happen. That’s a little different than maybe five or six years ago where the cars tended to push more with a bubble than a physical push, so it’s evolved. It will continue to evolve with different changes.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE ELEMENTS OF BEING A PUSHER? WHEN IS THE BEST TIME? WHEN IS THE WORST? “On the last lap I like everybody who pushes me. There’s no sacred cows. There’s no bad pushers on the last lap. It’s kind of funny how that works out. What do they say? There’s no atheists in a hospital. There’s no bad pushers on the last lap at Talladega. There are different spots that you’d rather be pushed. The cars tend to really like being pushed down the backstretch and the Next Gen car is pretty forgiving about accepting a push as a whole, particularly when they put the wicker on the car – the wicker that was put on to keep it from flipping I thought made the cars just a little bit easier to drive and to take a push, but it can still go sideways. Last year, I was involved in a crash down the backstretch and I was pushing a car in front of me and we were kind of changing lanes and I got hit from behind while I was pushing and changing lanes and it was Austin Cindric that I think caused a crash, so it’s not a given that you can just push. It’s actually a pretty nice balance of some level of comfort.”
ARE THERE GOOD PUSHERS AND BAD PUSHERS OR IS EVERYBODY PRETTY GOOD? “I don’t really think there is anybody who is bad at pushing, there are just some that are more aggressive than others and you could argue that I fit into the more aggressive side, but that’s what the racing is. That’s what it wants.”
DID YOU HAVE TO CHANGE YOUR MINDSET TO HOW YOU APPROACH THESE RACES? “You definitely are more reactive at Talladega than you used to be. I felt like I could be proactive and now I’m more reacting to moves. It’s a different type of game. That’s the thing that I always try to explain to fans who maybe don’t have a lot of knowledge of the sport or are newer to the sport of what makes, particularly NASCAR, so difficult of all the motorsports and it’s a really simple premise that the first one to the checkered flag at the end of x, y, z laps or miles wins. That’s unchanged at every event, but the nuances of how you get there are so unique week to week and are so controlled by this chaos theory of variables, where it’s like one small thing can completely change what it takes to win and sometimes that’s very hard to see. Two weeks ago when we were at Bristol, the temperature increased by 10-15 degrees over what it was in practice and that made the tires to where they wouldn’t wear out so quickly. That made the cars to where you had to drive them differently. That made the car setups to where you had to set them up differently to optimize, so this one small, uncontrollable variable of weather within plus or minus five or 10 degrees swing so many things. We were preparing before the race at Bristol to have 10 stops. I think we had four, so all of their preparation changed. For the driver, you watch the film and you value – ‘hey, this is how I want to drive the car,’ and all that changed. I’m backing up to Bristol so I can fast forward to Talladega. The same thing holds true on any given week. A small variable can change what’s valued to win the race. If an early yellow comes out in the stage, which, for example, happened in the last fall race at Talladega and it hit right at the fuel number. So you’re like, ‘All right, we’re gonna have to run the next forty-some laps, it’s gonna be like a 45-lap run,’ and that’s ultimate fuel save. That was the first stage of the race last fall. That variable changed the complete dynamics of that stage. It made the third lane develop because the pace was so slow and it made guys that were running towards the middle of the pack get towards the front of the pack at the end because they had enough fuel to do so. So, they’re just so variable-driven, where I feel most sports aren’t that way. An example I use is like a football game. Outside of maybe a snow game, the variables are fairly controlled. NASCAR is one of the last-variable controlled sports out there and becoming a master at it is not just something you aspire to do, it’s something you have to do to be good at it – trying to quickly discern the variables and use them to your advantage. Talladega is a great example of that. The variables of how another driver drives their car is completely out of your control, but you have to find a way to master that to your advantage.”
THERE ARE NO CHANGES TO THE CAR FOR TALLADEGA, BUT THERE COULD BE FOR THE FALL. ARE YOU SURPRISED THERE AREN’T ANY FOR THIS RACE AND WHAT SHOULD WE BE LOOKING AT? “RFK was part of the test at Michigan probably three or four weeks ago, where we explored different options to help the cars at tracks at very high speed and Michigan is very speed. The options, unfortunately, didn’t pan out that NASCAR had worked to develop, so it wasn’t a surprise that there weren’t any changes. I knew there was effort being put into it and, candidly, not everything you try is gonna work, but I appreciate that there was effort put into it and I think there’s very much a back to the drawing board mentality. I don’t feel like it’s not being worked on, but we’re not gonna skip the race just because we haven’t figured something out, so the show goes on.”
HOW HAVE YOU DEALT WITH THESE FIRST NINE WEEKS WHERE THE TEAM CARS ARE RUNNING PRETTY WELL AND YOU GUYS ARE SCRATCHING AND CLAWING? “Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of scratching and clawing. Our company went through a lot of changes. My team went through a lot of changes and we haven’t recognized the step forward. Hopefully soon we’ll recognize the two steps forward with all the changes we made, but we definitely took a step backwards in the process. I feel like that can strike at any moment and we just need to trust our process. We’re developing a lot of people and they’re not all clicking together yet, but there’s a lot of signs that say they can and should, whether if that’s on pit road or with the team and the mechanics and engineers. All of those pieces have to click to have a great race and to win on any given weekend, and we haven’t experienced that yet, but we see these glimpses of being able to get there. I feel like Darlington was our best race so far this year and we had a shot to win that race and we kind of lost it on pit road, but it showed a lot of potential for us. I felt like we had a couple other races this year where we’ve had a lot of potential and we haven’t recognized it. Daytona was one. We were running up front in the stages and had some issues again on pit road that put us behind and ended up getting caught up in wrecks, so we have to work to clean that up, and certainly there are things I can do better too, but I think that can click at any moment.”
THE STATS SHOW THIS IS YOUR WORST START SINCE 2010, BUT IT DOESN’T FEEL THAT WAY? “No. I mean, it’s definitely not my best start. It doesn’t feel like my best start, but 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. 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.”
HOW DOES A DRIVER GO INTO AN EVENT LIKE TALLADEGA WHERE THERE IS A HIGH PROBABILITY THAT EVEN IF YOU DO EVERYTHING RIGHT FOR 95 PERCENT OF THE RACE, YOU COULD END UP IN A WRECK? “I think, first off, when you know that’s probably a reality, you have to, one, get over yourself and not allow your own ego to put you in a place where you get your feelings hurt. My ultimate feeling on plate races is I pretty much accept the fact that we’re gonna crash out of half of them. Statistically, that seems pretty accurate and my goal is the ones that we don’t crash out of is to put ourselves in a position where we can contend for a win. The days I feel the worst about at speedway races are the ones where we don’t crash and we finish outside the top 10. Those are the real losses, to me at least. When you don’t get crashed and you don’t finish in the top 10, you need to take the races where you don’t get crashed and you need to run and finish in the top 10. That’s the game to me.”
CAN YOU GO INTO THE WRECK THAT HAPPENED LAST YEAR WITH THE PACK GOING THROUGH A WILD GYRATION AND WHY A SLOWER CAR THAT EVERYONE IS PASSING ON THE INSIDE CONTRIBUTES TO A BUNCH OF CARS WRECKING? “The butterfly effect for sure, right? I think in general if you can think of racing on a plate track like a series of rubber bands that are all pulling at one time and when too many of them get stretched, they snap back and that’s a perfect example. That’s how I conceptualize it in my brain. A scenario like last year, one car in the wrong place at the wrong time stretched all these rubber bands and they snapped back in one moment. It’s more energy than the field can take and when the energy level becomes too high, that’s when the crashes happen and that energy manifests itself in different ways. More often than not, particularly with the Next Gen car, it’s contact based, but before the Next Gen car you would see similar accidents happen that weren’t necessarily contact based. There was a race, I think in the fall of ‘19 where to give you an example of it before the Next Gen car, where there was a three-wide battle for the lead and the inside car came up and side drafted – it didn’t even touch, just side drafted the middle car and took the air off of him and he spun out and caused a huge wreck. That one stands out to me. That’s the one where Brendan Gaughan was flipping down the backstretch and the wreck started without any contact at all. The rubber band stretching there was just an air rubber band, but all of these things conflated at one time. The energy got too high and the wreck happens. To your example, the one last fall, it’s more contact based, where you had that Newton’s cradle effect of four or five cars coming together at one time, a big energy transfer to the car at the very front, and he crashes. In practice, NASCAR is this gigantic science and physics event happening at one time and probably no more so than, at least the physics part than Talladega in the draft when all of these pieces are coming together. The crash at Talladega last fall started with a slow car on the bottom and stretched the inside car, which was Austin Cindric, to me, which was the second car – it stretched us a car length and a half, two car lengths.”
WHY DID IT STRETCH? “It pulled him forward, so he caught a draft off the 38 car and pulled him forward from me, so he got a car length and a half, maybe two car lengths gap, which pulled me a car length in front of the car behind me, and then it pulled the third car, which I think was the 22, a car length in front of the fourth car, which pulled him a half a car length in front of the fifth car and then they all converged together – all the runs converged together in one moment down the middle of the backstretch from the fifth car hitting the fourth car to the third car to the second car to the first car and all the energy transferred in just one big shot. It was not particularly any one person’s blame, but a reality nonetheless.”
IN THAT SITUATION ARE YOU THINKING IT’S A DANGER POINT? “Absolutely. Yeah. You can feel it happening. I knew as soon as the rubber band effectively stretched, which is the gap to the cars in front and behind me, and it was gonna snap. You just hope that it doesn’t exceed the energy of what your cars can take.”
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE TO THE CASUAL FAN ABOUT WHAT IT TAKES MENTALLY TO DO THE RIGHT THING THERE? “Going fast at Talladega, if I placed the average person, I’m pretty confident they could run in the back at Talladega, but that’s never anybody’s goal. The goal is to be in the middle of the bees nest and come out on top, and that’s actually really hard. The gaps are very small and the commitment level is very high. You have to get comfortable with the fact we have an extremely limited visibility, and that’s not just because of the helmets or the head surrounds or even the car itself, it’s because you’re in the middle of a pack and you can’t see through the cars you’re around. In a lot of ways, you’re driving at 190-plus miles an hour and your reference points are very poor, so it’s a really unique environment that it’s hard to get comfortable with. It’s intentionally hard to get comfortable with and I think that’s the challenge and that’s part of the fun about it is being in this really difficult environment and trying to come out on top of it, and I think that’s super rewarding too.”
DO YOU FEEL YOUR EXPERIENCE ALLOWS YOU TO STAY CALM AND OBJECTIVE WHEN THINGS AREN’T GOING AS WELL AS YOU LIKE? “Yes, that’s part of it, for sure. You get a feel for what it takes to be good or bad and you know when you should be panicked and when you shouldn’t be. And then some of it is with the points format, we saw this last year with the 22 car. I mean, up until I think Nashville they were effectively not a contender at all and they went and won a race and got locked into the playoffs and parlayed that into a better effort in the playoffs than what they had at the start of the season and the next thing you know, they go all the way. So, 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. In that case, you’re just looking to put together all the right pieces to get hot when it matters and that’s the format. Whether that’s right or wrong, it is the format, and I think over the years I’ve come to better terms with that.”
YOU FINISHED SECOND IN BOTH TALLADEGA RACES LAST YEAR. DOES THAT MAKE YOU APPRECIATE THE SIX WINS YOU’VE HAD THERE EVEN MORE? “I feel like at Talladega I can say with full transparency that I feel like I’ve won some races there I probably shouldn’t have, and I feel like I’ve lost some races I probably should have won. In some ways, it just feels like it’s netted out even. I feel like I should have won the last two races there. I look back at some of the other races that I’ve won there and I’m like, ‘I don’t know. That one was maybe a little questionable.’ So you’re like, ‘All right, that’s part of the deal.’ You don’t get your name on the trophy for the races you should have won, but conversely, they do put your name on the trophies of the ones you probably shouldn’t have and you just have to accept that.”
HOW MUCH DOES THE SHORT OFF-SEASON IN NASCAR IMPACT A TEAM WHEN YOU HAVE A LOT OF NEW FACES LIKE YOU REFERENCED? “Honestly, not that much. The bigger impact is this trailing effect of Covid. If you look back at the 2020 season, 2021 season most all of the teams made significant cuts to be able to sustain business, whether that be by financial need or by regulation. The people that were most susceptible to those cuts were the most junior people across the industry as you could probably imagine, and now the entire industry is reaping what they sowed, where there’s just no depth to the industry at all. So, whenever you’re a team in transition who is looking for positional talent, you’re just wholly reliant on that depth. The industry as a whole is not in a spot to be able to pull from anywhere, so I think it’s a big challenge that is a bit universal. It’s not limited to just RFK or the 6 team. We somewhat consciously took that risk and accepted the fact we were going to have to take steps backward to go forward.”
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE HUMAN SAFEGUARDS YOU HAVE IN PLACE TO MANAGE THIS STRETCH OF 28 STRAIGHT WEEKENDS OF RACING? “More and more, and this is me putting on my team ownership cap, we have to protect people from themselves. We try to do right by people. I can’t say we’re perfect at it, but you try to encourage people to take their weekend off, like last weekend, or take multiple days during the week off to go with that. There are some people in different seasons of life who they don’t really want a week off. There are other people who are in seasons of life who are like, ‘No, I’d like to get three or four weekends off.’ There are a lot of people trying to find an illness they can have the week of Mexico (laughing), but then there are other people who are like, ‘Man, I’d give anything to go to that race.’ So, the different seasons of life is real. In particular for RFK, having three teams gave us a little more depth that I think makes it a little easier for us, whether it be with pit crew guys or road mechanics in the sense that we now have a little more of a shop base to be able to interchange. It isn’t uncommon, but we had a couple pit crew members this year that we gave weeks off kind of preemptively, whether it be a family member’s wedding or whatever that might be. It’s like, ‘No, you should just go take that now because you’re gonna wish you’d never missed that.’ And we’ve intentionally built the depth to be able to do that and not crumble to our knees as a company because one person is missing. I think you try to be thoughtful with how you build the company out to be able to handle those challenges. They’re still not easy, but we’re committed to doing what we can for our people when we can and it’s give and take on both sides.”
YOU SPENT A LOT OF TIME WITH RICHARD PETTY A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO IN D.C. WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO BE WITH HIM AND WHAT DID YOU GUYS TALK ABOUT? “I can’t remember where I was or what I was doing, but it was sometime last year that I was thinking about him and how special he is to our sport. He’s a really unique person, and I could get on my soap box here because my personal opinion of Richard Petty is probably different than a lot of people’s opinion of Richard Petty. I feel like Richard Petty is the greatest race car driver that ever lived and the reason why I feel that way is broader than just his persona, which I think is pretty cool. It’s broader than his 200 wins, and I think it connects back to something that makes racing very unique compared to other sports, it’s the aspect of he raced in an era where the contemporaries that he had, that at least could win or were top level drivers, would, candidly, not make it out every year. He himself, multiple times, barely made it out of big crashes. We have the one in Darlington and the Cup one in Daytona, and not only did he survive those, but he kept racing and he didn’t just keep racing, he kept winning. Nobody else can really claim that, at least not at the NASCAR level. Maybe you could look at Mario Andretti or somebody of that nature, so, to me, even though there are drivers that are gonna have amazing resumes of championships, amazing resumes of big race wins or total race wins, but he has the quintessential race car driver story of success, persona and guts. All three of those together are just legendary, and I don’t think he gets enough credit for that, particularly nowadays when we’ve become so stat based with everything. We forget just how impressive it is that this guy at one point in his career had won multiple races, multiple championships, had been through crashes that he barely lived through, watched other people of similar nature die at races. After experiencing all of that, he got back in the car and won races and championships. There’s nobody like that that I can put a finger on, so I was thinking about that sometime last year and what I was really thinking about was, ‘Brad, what are the things in your life that you take entirely for granted that you’re gonna totally regret 10-20-30-40 years from now?’ And one of them as I was kind of mentally making this list was I had access to Richard Petty and didn’t do anything with it, like didn’t get to know him or didn’t get to build a relationship with him, which was entirely true up until I went on that trip, you know, for the last decade or more of my life. I was like, ‘Man, I’m gonna really regret that one day. I don’t know when or how, but one day I’m gonna really regret that.’ I remember making a mental note of that and not necessarily having an answer to it, and so when the opportunity came up to go to D.C. for the trip with NASCAR and the congressional committee and I saw his name was on the list I was like, ‘That’s great. Maybe I’ll get to spend some time with him.’ And just by complete happenstance it ended up being that I was on the airplane with him. I don’t want to undersell, but Toni Breitinger was on the plane with me and Rajah was on the plane with me, so they were there too. It wasn’t just Richard and I, but it was me sitting in front of Richard for three, four or five hours. It was, ‘Tell me about this. Tell me about that. What was this like? What was that like? How would you handle this? What’s your opinion on that?’ And it was awesome. I wish that we had the Google glasses. We just bought a pair and I wish I was wearing them for that plane ride and pushed the record button, so that was a real blessing and a real treat. I would extend that same thought to all of us in the room. What are the things that 10-20 years from now you’re gonna say, ‘I wish I would have taken advantage of that opportunity and regret I didn’t do it.’ Richard was one of them for me and, given what I know about this room, probably the same. He’s got so many amazing stories and has lived the fullest of lives. He’s lived 20 people’s lives.”
WHAT WAS THE ONE THING YOU CAME AWAY WITH THE MOST? WHAT DID HE SAY THAT STOOD OUT? “I’m still blown away by the same thing, which is, ‘Richard, how did you get back in the car after winning all these races, championships, having two or three kids, and after seeing the Ned Jarrett’s win and retire, and Fireball Roberts perish on the racetrack. How did you endure? How did you keep going?’ How did you not just say,’ You know what, I’ve made my money. I’ve got my farm. I’ve got my wife and kids. I’m just gonna pack it up.’ ‘How did you keep enduring and enduring at a high level because you could just keep enduring in the sense of I’m just gonna keep racing, but when the tires look like they’re gonna blow out and it looks a little hairy, I’m just gonna fall on back. He could have done that, but he didn’t. Asking him, maybe less candidly, those questions and just hearing him and his commitment to the sport and how NASCAR is and what he was and what he always wanted to be. That’s what just blew me away. Nowadays, people aren’t so much committed to things as I think he was and his generation was, but full send.”
AND HE’S STILL AROUND. “He’s still around. He hasn’t packed it up. It’s the same thing right now. He could pack it up and sit on the farm. Certainly, nobody would hold it against him, but he doesn’t.”
WHAT HAS IT BEEN LIKE THIS YEAR TO SEE CHRIS AND RYAN DOING WELL AND OUTPERFORMING YOU? “They’re pushing me, which is good. I don’t want it to be a one directional relationship where I was pushing them. Maybe I got a little more than I hoped for (laughing), but I really like the intensity that both of them have. Ryan has brought a level of thoroughness that is very impressive and effort that comes with that. Ryan and Chris are two great race car drivers. My goal for them is to put them in equipment and surround them with a team to where they can display that they’re elite race car drivers. I don’t feel like I’ve fully realized that yet. I’m pretty happy with the teams we’ve built around them. I’m not quite as thrilled with the equipment we’ve put around them, but they show the ability that when we do hit on those pieces, they can connect and get results out of them. That’s really exciting for me to see that for them. It’s not quite the same as watching your kids succeed, but in a similar vein it has a lot of correlation, so I can find ways to be happy with them beating me, which the competitor in me probably plugs his nose when I say that, but I’m proud of them nonetheless.”
BUT YOU STILL THINK YOU CAN BEAT THEM, TOO. “Yeah. I do (laughing). You have weekends like Darlington and you sit down after the race and you’re like, ‘Yeah, you should have made that move I made.’ We all have our egos.”
