Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Media Availability – Phoenix Raceway
Saturday, March 7, 2026
Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 6 Consumer Cellular Ford Mustang Dark Horse, stopped by the Phoenix Raceway infield media center to answer questions about his season to date and this weekend’s race. Keselowski is currently 12th in the series point standings.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 6 Consumer Cellular Ford Mustang Dark Horse – THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF TALK ABOUT COOL SHIRTS SINCE AUSTIN. WHAT DO YOU TELL YOUR TEAMS AS FAR AS THE BALANCE OF KEEPING A DRIVER COOL VERSUS POTENTIAL MODIFICATIONS FOR PERFORMANCE? “Our group, we let the teams have that autonomy of what they want to run, so if the driver wants to run a cool shirt, he runs a cool shirt and we try to provide the necessary engineering support to make sure that there isn’t an issue. I had one last year where we probably didn’t do a good enough job with that and we came back in and buttoned it up. Cool suits are a tough thing because they’re not designed in our environment to fail to safe, so when they fail, it’s fairly devastating and occasionally those things are gonna happen. It’s unfortunate when it happens to anyone, not just our team. There’s a solve that’s being worked on for all the different teams, but nothing seems to have been bulletproof yet. It’s one of the nuances of currently racing in the Cup Series.”
YOU HAD JOEY HAND ON STAND BY LAST WEEK, BUT YOU OPTED TO STAY IN THE CAR. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT WHEN YOU ALMOST HAD A FAIL SAFE PLAN TO HAVE A GOOD POINTS DAY? “Well, Joey was a fail safe in case I wasn’t able to run the race, where if I felt I couldn’t be competitive. In the car, I felt competitive. I felt like I could drive it to its limits and any change was just gonna put us further back, not because Joey isn’t a good driver, but by the time you execute a change and go to the back of the pack and do all those things and he can re-acclimate in a car that’s not made for him, not fitted for him, etc, that’s a lot to ask of somebody. If I felt like I was holding the team back, I would have made a change, but I didn’t feel that way.”
DID YOU ENJOY PARTICIPATING IN THE FULL SPEED SHOW? “I watched a few clips. I can’t say I’ve seen the entire thing. I think it just came out a day or two ago and I’ve been pretty jammed up, but that said, it’s great that this sport has that level of coverage. I think when I started in the Cup Series the teams and the sponsors were really, really protective around doing things like that, but the industry has found a way to get the teams in a better place and the different producers have over the years been more accommodating as well to making sure we don’t put things in there that embarrass ourselves or the sport, so I think that we’ve found a nice balance. I’m really proud of the sport for being able to put those types of things together, and I think Amazon as a whole, what they’ve brought to our sport, in my eyes at least, is underappreciated. They’ve put a big investment in the sport. They’re promoting really hard with not just the races that they cover, but the things they do outside of covering the races to cover the sport, so it’s refreshing to see that level of engagement.”
HOW DO YOU LIKE SHARING THE WEEKEND WITH INDYCAR AND WOULD YOU EVER WANT TO RACE IN AN INDYCAR? “I tested an IndyCar at Road America about 10 years ago and I loved it. I had a lot of fun. What’s really, really difficult is that all of my time in Cup I’ve never been with a manufacturer in the Cup Series that competes in the IndyCar Series and to go back and forth between the two is considerable pain for the OEMs that is tough to justify. I think that window for me has probably come and gone. There was a time where I was very, very interested, but life takes us in other places and I’m not complaining.”
HAS THE PREPARATION FOR PHOENIX THIS TIME AROUND CHANGED SINCE IT’S NOT HOSTING THE CHAMPIONSHIP EVENT ANYMORE? “One of the things that I really like about the format that we have switched to for 2026 is every race is kind of a championship race. The way the points stack up, significantly with a bonus to the winner. That has large ramifications to how the championship is gonna play out. Tyler Reddick winning the first three races is not just huge in the sense of how hard that is to achieve, it’s huge in the sense of the ramifications it has for him for being a real contender for the championship because of the extra bonus points that are offered. The structure of last year’s points, honestly, him winning the first three races was not super meaningful to the playoffs or to the championship. It was just a nice stat to have, so I look at this format and what it’s intended to do. It’s intended to make every race a big race and, for us specifically, this is what I think most of the teams would tell you is the start of the regular season. It’s more of a traditional racetrack and more of what we’re going to see. It values the things that most of the races from here on out are going to value, whether that’s speed in the race car, tactics by the driver, execution by the pit crew, or strategy by the crew chiefs. Those four elements are more represented here than they are the first three weeks of the season and more representative of the challenges we’re gonna have throughout the rest of the year.”
HOW ARE YOU FEELING AFTER THE PHYSICAL NATURE OF THE FIRST THREE RACES? HOW ARE YOU HEALING? “Really well. This is supposed to be a six to 12 month recovery and I’m on track to do it in three to four, which is great. I was just saying to my team when I was coming here that I got out of the motorhome and took my first three or four steps without a cane. I’m like, ‘I’m almost ready to be rid of this thing.’ Mentally, I’m ready to be rid of it, but physically I’m not. It feels good. Yes, driving the car is not the best thing for me in some ways, whether it be the vibration or the loads or just the movements to get in and out, but once I’m in the car I feel reasonable. I can’t say it’s the best I’ve ever felt, but I feel reasonable. There are little setbacks that come from driving the car with dehydration or just the workload in general, but with a day or two of recovery I’ve been able to come back even stronger each of the three races we’ve had so far. I’m really happy just staying the course and putting the work in and dealing with the pain. In some ways, it’s good for me because it provides the motivation to put the work in to do the rehab at a really high level and I think that’s been really good for me.”
THERE IS SOME IRONY THAT YOU’RE HIGHER IN POINTS THIS YEAR THAN A YEAR AGO WHEN YOU WERE HEALTHY. IS THAT A REFLECTION OF THIS ADDED WHATEVER YOU’RE HAVING TO DEAL WITH? “Certainly from the outside-in it could appear that way, but I would say that the start of last year was not very good for the 6 team and there was a lot of reasons for that. Some of it was poor luck and some of it was just poor execution. We turned over pretty much the entire team from ‘24 to ‘25 and that was a big transition. Now, the team has got its legs underneath it and I think it can position itself to be a contender.”
MICHAEL JORDAN HAS A TEAM THAT HAS WON THREE IN A ROW. DO YOU FIND THAT HIS PROFILE HAS BEEN GOOD FOR EVERYBODY IN THE SPORT? “Yeah. It’s hard to argue against Michael having a positive influence on the sport. I love the fact that he’s so engaged and at the races. I just can’t emphasize enough how important that is, not just for Michael, but for any of the key stakeholders to just have a physical presence at the racetrack, and that’s at all levels, not just the team level. So, for him to have a physical presence, I think it’s a testament to his fortitude for being a part of this sport because, let’s face it, even though he’s won the first three races, he’s lost a lot more as every car owner will. It’s not a dig on him. If I’m a guy like him, personally, and I wake up and say, ‘Where do I want to be today,’ and I know that I have less than a 10 percent chance of winning, flying my butt all across the country when I have all the things that Michael has is probably something that takes me a minute to emotionally justify, but he does. I’ll give him a lot of respect and credit for that because this sport is a grind, not just for the people that work in it, but also for the key stakeholders, whether it be team owners, executives, etc. He’s made the decision and choice to participate at a high level to be engaged. The fringe benefit for the sport is the brand that he has outside of it, which naturally comes with him, which I think is a great thing. I’m happy for him. I’m happy for the sport. It’s hard for me to see any negatives. I’m sure there are probably some out there, but I don’t see them and I”m genuinely happy that he’s a part of our sport.”
