Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Coca-Cola 600 Media Availability — Charlotte Motor Speedway
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Brad Keselowski, driver/owner of the No. 6 BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse, won the Coca-Cola 600 in 2020. He stopped by the Charlotte Motor Speedway infield media center this morning to talk about this weekend’s race, along with his memories of Kyle Busch.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 6 BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse – AS A DRIVER HAVING RACED KYLE, WHAT WILL HIS ABSENCE BE LIKE IN THAT REGARD AS A COMPETITOR? “I don’t know if it’s soaked in for me fully. I’ve been racing or going to racetracks and competing against Kyle Busch since 2001, so that’s 24-25 years. It certainly will be different. He brought a lot of different things to this sport and specifically on track a lot of different ways of looking at it – fresh ideas that were things that I at least learned from, so a really dedicated racer and innovator and specifically was strategic with the moves that he would make on the racetrack. I was just watching a video of him from Dover last week, where he had some kind of issue and was smart enough to realize he could speed down pit road and it would be better for him, and those are the type of things that were just quintessential Kyle. That’s irreplaceable.”
HAD YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH KYLE STARTED TO THAW AT ALL THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS? HOW MUCH DO YOU LAMENT NOT HAVING THE CHANCE TO SEE WHERE THAT RELATIONSHIP COULD HAVE EVOLVED IN YOUR RESPECTIVE POST-DRIVING CAREERS? “I’ll start with the latter, kind of selfishly I was hopeful for a long time that our racing career would continue on a journey that saw us in the Hall of Fame and doing those type of things together. Who knows? Maybe one day, competing in the Truck Series against each other when we were done with Cup. Obviously, that’s not going to be the case now, but with respect to our relationship, I would say there was a small thaw over the last year, maybe two, that came from his circumstances being different with respect to race teams and positions on the grid. It was interesting to see, and it was thawing almost more by the weekend. I flew with Kyle Busch on the way to Dover last Friday and those are things I never thought I would say three, five, 10 years ago. So, I think it was on that path. I don’t have any great stories to tell, but it’s sad to not see that through. Whatever loss I have there, honestly, pales in comparison to many others, so I don’t want to overplay that, but it’s the reality.”
OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS HAD YOU NOTICED KYLE WAS NOT FEELING WELL? DID YOU GET A SENSE THAT HE WAS NOT FEELING WELL? “Yes, and I won’t go into any specifics, but then when he ran the Truck race on Friday of last week, those were honestly erased in my mind. I’m not any level of doctor, but I do know the workload that is associated with running a double-duty weekend pretty well having done it myself. He obviously executed at a very high level, winning one of the races, so I was kind of very dismissive of that.”
DO YOU THINK BECAUSE OF THE SCHEDULE THAT WE’RE UNDER IN RACING THAT SOMETIMES, PARTICULARLY THE COMPETITORS, MIGHT NOT PAY AS MUCH ATTENTION TO WHAT COULD PROGRESS WHEN YOU GET SICK? “Again, I’m not a doctor, but I can only speak for myself. The racing season is a very difficult season. It’s 38 weekends a year, and there’s a lot going on, a lot of opportunities to have cycles in your health. I broke my leg at the end of last year, the beginning of this year, and I had to power through it because that’s what this sport requires. There are preliminary races here with the Truck Series and NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. There are no shortage of drivers that would love to take my seat or anybody else’s seat if we weren’t feeling well, and I think every driver feels that pressure as most athletes do, so it’s not unique to NASCAR in that sense. We’re all thinking to ourselves, ‘I don’t want to be replaced. I love my job. I love this sport,’ and you try to power through it the best you can. That’s not always ideal, but it’s the reality of life in sports. I can’t speak to where Kyle was or exactly what was going on with him. I don’t know that. I did read the report just before I walked in here, and I was certainly saddened by that. Race car drivers don’t want other people to get in their cars because they don’t know if they’ll ever get back in it themselves, so that’s pretty natural.”
WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO HONOR KYLE BUSCH GOING FORWARD? DID YOU SEE THE VIDEO THIS MORNING OF THE CAR BEING LOWERED? “I did see the car lowering video. I’ve got to be honest, I’m not that great at those types of things of understanding what’s the best way forward to honor him. I’ve heard and read a lot of different ideas and there are some that you like more than others as you can imagine. Probably the best one that I know right now that I would like to see is something with effect to the Hall of Fame and so forth, but I understand there’s a lot of things to work through on that, but it’s very clear that Kyle is a first ballot Hall of Famer and I don’t know why that needs to wait another year.”
SO YOU THINK HE DESERVES TO BE IN THE HALL OF FAME RIGHT AWAY? “Yeah, I think so.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN YOU SAW THE VIDEO? “Kyle’s loss is the whole industry’s loss, and the industry has had a lot of losses here in the last five or six months. That seems to come in waves. I don’t know why that is, so it’s been a tough few months for the industry and this is another hard one. I don’t want to try to weigh one against another, but it’s a tough part of this sport. There are a lot of people in this garage area. I did some napkin math a few months ago and I figure there are about 10,000 people that work in this industry, whether it’s at the teams or at NASCAR or at the racetracks. The events go on because of them and some of them have more notoriety than others, which is natural, but whenever you have a group of people that large, there is going to be loss. There’s going to be moments of pain and some just naturally hit harder and wider than others and Kyle’s hits pretty deep.”
YOU WERE 17 WHEN DALE EARNHARDT PASSED. WHEN YOU THINK OF HIM AND KYLE BUSCH FROM THAT KIND OF LENS, CAN YOU COMPARE THE TWO? WERE THEY PRETTY SIMILAR? “I wasn’t in the garage when Dale died. I guess I was a teenager and I remember it, but I wasn’t in the garage area, so it’s hard for me to speak from an industry perspective, but I can speak more from a fan perspective and see a lot of similarities, for sure. Clearly, both had a lot of fans, a lot of recognition, a lot of notoriety. I hate comparing things because it’s different eras and it’s never seemingly fair. I know a lot of people get their feathers ruffled, but it is a significant moment in the sport. Much like when Dale died, this sport won’t be the same without Kyle. How that is, I’m not entirely sure. I’ll understand it a lot more in the next three to five years and you will too, but it is a certainty that it will be different – much like when Dale passed it was different.”
YOU REPOSTED A STORY ABOUT A FAN WHO INTERACTED WITH DENNY HAMLIN SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS WHEN DENNY GOT THE NEWS. FOR YOUR SAKE, HOW DIFFICULT IS IT GOING TO BE FOR YOU BEING HERE AT THE TRACK AND INTERACTING WITH THE FANS UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES? “You have to keep moving. I mean, there are a lot of fans in this sport that paid a lot of money to come here and watch this race. They have expectations. It’s kind of like if you work as anyone in a business that serves people, which we effectively do, they still expect to be served whether you’re having a good day or an awful day. I just appreciate the grace that the fans have given to date over everyone in the industry trying to sort out their own emotions and grieving process, and hope that continues, but I understand that there are still expectations. There’s still a race to run. There’s still fans that bought tickets and want to see the race and sponsors and so forth that have paid money and people that have worked really hard to prepare for this weekend. That’s not meant to be dismissive at all. It’s a tough balancing act for sure.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE KYLE MADE YOU BETTER AND, IF SO, HOW? “Oh, all the time, yeah. Even before everything happened over the last few days, I was thinking about it. I was behind Kyle one time here a number of years ago. This would have been 10-15 years ago and he was running down here in turns three and four. He had this unique line where he wouldn’t arc the corner, but he would kind of hit the apron really early and make the car turn, and he was making it work really well. I still remember being behind him and seeing him do that because, at the time, the dialogue of how to run this racetrack was off of Jimmie Johnson, who would come into turn three and he would kind of start at the top of the racetrack with this huge arc down to the bottom and then run up off the corner with a lot of speed. Kyle’s approach was like a 180 of that, and he was making it work in front of me, where I, at the time, was trying to do everything that Jimmie was doing. It’s in those moments you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s more than one way to do this.’ He had a way that was something that I saw and added that to the playbook. ‘When my car is driving a certain way, this is how I’m gonna run this track.’ So, I was thinking about that this week as I was preparing to run the race. I need to make sure that’s in my playbook for if my car is driving a certain way or certain track condition, and I was thinking about seeing that from Kyle a long time ago. There are all kinds of nuances. Drivers learn from other drivers. It’s totally natural. You just seemed to learn more from Kyle than most other drivers.”
THE CARS NOW ARE ALMOST BULLETPROOF, SO WITH THE EXTRA 100 MILES WHERE DOES THAT PUT THE PRESSURE NOW? MORE ON THE TEAMS? THE PIT CREWS? THE DRIVERS? “It’s funny you say that. I was telling somebody this the other day. My uncle is in town for the race weekend. He hasn’t been here for 20-some years, but he ran this race in the seventies. NASCAR has the YouTube Channel NASCAR Classics. I don’t know if anyone in this room has seen it, but we’ve spent the last few nights re-watching some of those old races that he ran in and I’m not very patient with watching a race, particularly one that’s been run 50 years ago. So, I pulled up my phone and loaded up the race results as I was watching the race and I was stunned. A number of these races they had 40 cars start and less than 15 finish. Third and fourth place were multiple laps down, not one lap down, multiple laps down like three, five, 10 laps down, and the DNF list was half the field and it was engine, engine, engine, engine and then some obscure crash here or there. I guess with time you forget those things. Maybe we’ll see somebody blow and engine this weekend in the Cup Series. I suspect if we do, it will only be one or two, where 50 years ago it was more than half the field. So, that’s a big change. On top of that with the stages, this track used to be notorious for going really long, like three or four pit stop cycles under green, so you never had a chance to catch your breath as a driver. You had to keep adapting to the track as it went to night. Now with the stages, it only has one pit cycle generally until you have a yellow flag or a guaranteed yellow, so that has changed the racing a lot. Of course, the Next Gen car is very durable. I would say pit road has become more important than it used to be for the Coke 600. It used to be the Coke 600 qualifying was not really all that important because it was such a long race. Now it’s probably even more important than any other race because you’re guaranteed to have a number of yellow flag pit stops and if you don’t qualify well, your pit selection is really problematic and can keep you from having a good day. Last year’s Coke 600, I had an excellent car. I’d say I had a car that could run in the top two or three and we did not qualify well and every pit stop was a long stop because I was parked around other cars and it cost me a chance to win the race. That puts a lot of emphasis on qualifying that I don’t think existed, so the racing has evolved. There’s more emphasis on pit crews, more emphasis on restarts and less emphasis on car durability without a doubt.”
YOUR VICTORY CELEBRATION IS UNIQUE AND SPECIAL. IF YOU GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO WIN AGAIN, THAT’S GOING TO BE A FANTASTIC IMAGE BUT YOU ALSO HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO PRESENT A LASTING IMAGE AS THE FINAL VOICE OF THE WEEKEND. WITH THAT POWER, WHAT WOULD YOU HOPE TO RELATE TO FANS IN A SENSE OF HONORING AND ACKNOWLEDGING KYLE? “I hope to have that honor. There are no guarantees and there are 30 other drivers that are doing their best to deny that, but I would suspect that whoever wins this race will do some kind of bow, and I would be no different. I think that’s the best way.”
