Brad Keselowski posted his second consecutive top-10 result in recent events by notching a strong sixth-place result in the 2026 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday, July 26.
Keselowski, the 2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion and the 2018 Brickyard 400 champion from Rochester Hills, Michigan, took the green flag for Sunday’s event in 16th place. After spending the early portions of the event racing within the top-20 mark, he executed his first pit stop under green nearing the Lap 40 mark as nearly the entire field cycled through a first round of pit strategies. After a Lap 44 accident and a one-lap shootout to conclude the first stage period, Keselowski carved his way to settle in 11th place and just miss out on notching a first set of stage points by a single position.
Restarting in ninth place when the second stage period commenced on Lap 55, Keselowski competed inside of the top-10 for a majority of this period. After executing his second green flag pit stop within the Lap 90 mark, Keselowski ended up in 13th place when the second stage period concluded due to a caution that flew on Lap 96 for a single-car incident and with the caution period stretching to the stage’s conclusion.
When the final stage period commenced with 56 laps remaining, Keselowski steadily navigated his way back in the top-10 mark and was racing in 10th place when the caution returned with 46 laps remaining due to debris on the course. After pitting with the field during the caution, he gained four spots to move into seventh place. For the next restart, Keselowski was racing in sixth place and was poised for a top-five spot when Tyler Reddick made slight contact with Keselowski that got the latter briefly loose through the second turn. Amid the contact, Keselowski lost sixth place to Reddick, but continued in seventh place and was ahead of a multi-car accident that drew the field into another caution period during the next lap.
During the final restart with 34 laps remaining, Keselowski briefly muscled up to fifth place before he was quickly overtaken by Chase Briscoe to fall to sixth place. For the event’s remainder, Keselowski retained sixth place and trailed the lead by more than six seconds when he crossed the finish line and took the checkered flag in his car number’s spot.
With the result, Keselowski notched his sixth top-10 result of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, his eighth top-10 result through 14 Brickyard 400 starts and his highest on-track result since finishing sixth at Kansas Speedway in mid-April. Combined with his seventh-place result at North Wilkesboro Speedway last Sunday, Keselowski notched his first pair of back-to-back top-10 runs since finishing 10th and second at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway in March, respectively. The back-to-back top-10 results at North Wilkesboro and Indianapolis also enabled the driver/co-owner of the No. 6 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford team to rally from finishing 21st or worse through eight of the previous 11 events prior to North Wilkesboro.
Prior to this year’s Brickyard 400, Keselowski was mired in 19th place in the 2026 driver’s standings and 58 points below the top-16 cutline to make the NASCAR Cup Series Chase. After Indianapolis, he retained 19th place and is 50 points below the cutline. He has four regular-season events remaining on this year’s schedule spanning throughout the month of August to work his way above the cutline before the Chase commences.
“We had a bad slide through the month of June,” Keselowski said on TNT Sports. “We just need some strong consistent runs and we’re going to need about four more of these to make it into the Chase. Solid day for us. We need to be faster to turn these into wins, but we’re executing with what we have.”
Brad Keselowski’s pursuit to make the 2026 Chase resumes on August 9 at Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa, for the Iowa Corn 350. The event’s broadcast time is slated to commence at 3:30 p.m. ET on USA Network, MRN Radio, SiriusXM and HBO MAX.
