Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
South Point 400 Qualifying — Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Saturday, October 3, 2026
Following NASCAR Cup Series qualifying at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Chip Bowers, president, RFK Racing, came to the infield media center and addressed the news that Brad Keselowski will not be returning to the team as a driver in 2027. He also answered questions from the media. Here is the full transcript of that session?
CHIP BOWERS, President, RFK Racing – “I want to start first and foremost by just saying how much I appreciate Brad Keselowski. He has been a tremendous partner to me personally, to our ownership group of Jack Roush and Roush Enterprises and Fenway Sports Group. He is not just the consummate professional and future Hall of Fame race car driver, but he’s also an incredible person. He’s been a great friend and someone who has really helped modernize our business on the track over the last five years. I think it’s fair to say he will be an important chapter in our organization’s history and he you will not find bigger fans in the garage or in life than the people associated with our organization, so I felt it was important to start by thanking him for all that he’s done for us and I’m excited to continue to root for him over the course of the next six weeks and the rest of his career.”
QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
HOW IS RFK RACING A BETTER ORGANIZATION GOING FORWARD WITH BRAD KESELOWSKI NOT A PART OF IT? “I will tell you that, one, a lot of the reasons why we are competitive today are thankfully because of Brad. If you go back before Brad’s arrival, it’s fair to say that we weren’t as competitive as a racing team as we are today. That’s largely due to Brad’s vision for what we could become as an organization. I’ll tell you that there are 150 people in our competition room that are incredibly talented and very excited about their role with our organization, so we felt like we’ve built a really good foundation. Don’t get me wrong, Brad means a lot to us as a race car driver on the track. He’s had some success with us. He’s a tremendous teammate and he’s really helped us understand what we could become on the track. That said, we feel like we’ve gone to an area where we’ve become more competitive than we’ve been historically, now it’s time to take the next step. We have a great deal of belief that we have the right people to do that and look forward to adding additional talent to help us get there.”
WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR MAKING THIS DECISION? “Like any decision like this it’s hard. These decisions are not made likely. Myself and Brad’s team worked together over the course of a number of months to figure out what the next chapter of our careers looked like together, and I say our I mean our organization as a whole and Brad. One of the things that I heard very early in the process from Brad is that he really has an interest in being a race car driver for the foreseeable future. I think a five-year plus span is what he’s got his eyes on and I applaud that. We are excited about Brad considering all the things that he’s considering and things that he wants to achieve on the track. I think that’s tremendous. We’re gonna be rooting for him the entire way. I think for us as an organization as we looked at it and looked back as we started our journey together five years ago, we had an idea of Brad taking on a very ambitious role. He’s gonna be race car driver. He’s gonna be head of competition. He’s gonna be minority owner. He’s a businessman and has interest outside of our organization. He’s a father. That is an incredible amount of things to balance and we have a lot of empathy for just how hard all of that is to achieve and to achieve at a high level. So when we looked at it, we wanted to make sure organizationally that we not only set ourselves up for near-term success, but really long-term sustainable success, So when we started looking at what the next three years look like for us and beyond, it was clear that we wanted Brad to start focusing more on his role in competition. We felt like, as you all know, you look at a Chris Gabehart or a Chad Knaus and the list goes on and on and on, these are 24/7 jobs. I mean, you have to live, breathe it constantly and if we want to be in the same conversation as Hendrick Motorsports and Penske Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing, it’s gonna take that level of commitment and that’s what we’re focused on as a company. That’s what we’re focused on across the entire organization, and so, for us, we wanted that to be a natural transition over the next two to three years for Brad. I think he wants to continue to drive much longer than that and that’s fine. We applaud that. Like I said, we want to give Brad, because we have such immense respect and appreciation for Brad, every opportunity to do all the things he wants to do in his career. But that’s what makes it so hard. This is a business and we just weren’t aligned with that and that happens sometimes. We just wanted to make the competition side more of a focus and he wanted to focus more on the driving side. We get that and that’s why it took us so long to get here is that we worked so hard and so diligently to find a solution and just couldn’t get there. That happens sometimes in business. That doesn’t mean that it was acrimonious because it wasn’t. You hear a lot of things that there were arguments between Brad and Fenway Sports Group. That could not be further from the truth. There is no adversarial relationship. We are all still friends. It’s hard. That’s difficult emotionally. It’s been a tough week from that standpoint because we never thought we’d find ourselves here, but I think everybody did what they felt was in their best interest and that’s okay. We understand.”
ARE YOU SURPRISED YOU COULDN’T GET TO A POINT WHERE HE COULD STILL DRIVE AND POTENTIALLY GIVE UP SOME OF THE COMPETITION STUFF AND FIND A HAPPY MEDIUM? “Yeah, I am. I know he feels the same way. I think we’re both surprised that we just couldn’t figure it out. The reality is that when you have a relationship that was as intertwined as Brad’s was with our organization – driver, head of competition, investor – a lot of that was wrapped into one agreement, so when you start looking about what his future might hold on the track as a driver and we’re trying to figure out how best to allocate his time, we could have gone and tried to find a new head of competition. That’s challenging as you might imagine for someone to still drive for us who helped build that piece of the business, who now is going to be focused on other things. We wanted to set the next person up for success and if he is to go drive for another organization that is not a Ford Racing team, you might imagine there are a lot of concerns around that. So, there is a concern about sharing intellectual property and all the things, you simply just can’t have that dynamic. One key decision, unfortunately, creates a domino effect for all the other ones and that’s what ultimately led us to where we are.”
HOW MUCH OF YOUR SPONSORSHIP, IF ANY, IS TIED TO BRAD AND YOU MIGHT HAVE TO REPLACE WITH HIS DEPARTURE? “Zero. All of our partners are actually associated with all three of our cars for the most part, so that was part of how we planned out our partnership initiative so all of our guys can make appearances on behalf of our brands. Our partners have been extremely supportive of us. I know there was some discussion around was Kroger concerned about the fact that we may run an open car and a third car, the answer is no. Not once did they ever tell us that they had to have a chartered car. It never came up. Obviously, everyone if you’re running an open car at Daytona for the 500, there’s a little concern that you might not qualify, so, yeah, we’ve got to figure that piece out, but as it relates to the rest of the schedule, that was never a concern. So, there was no smoking gun here. There’s no other outlying issue that people want to point to for why unfortunately we weren’t able to figure it out. It was simply those issues that I’ve addressed.”
YOUR STATEMENT SAID YOU ARE COMMITTED TO RUNNING A THIRD CAR. WHY IS THAT AN IMPORTANT ASPECT FOR THE TEAM TO PURSUE? “I touched on it a little bit earlier, and I want to keep reiterating this. I’ve said this a lot since I joined the organization about a year ago, the reason I joined this organization is that Roush Enterprises, Fenway Sports Group, Brad Keselowski, collectively, our organizational focus has been on being a tier 1A organization. We had tremendous success as Roush Racing. We went through a period there where we weren’t as successful. We want to get back to that. No one wants to be a middle of the pack franchise. Not one. And we can’t do that running two cars. We know that we need three cars to achieve that. We’ve worked extremely hard in large part thanks to Brad’s leadership to run three cars, to secure more partners, to make sure that we build the right infrastructure with the right engineering talent and the right talent in the pit crew. The list is endless and now that we’ve done a really good job of building that foundation, we would be doing ourselves and our fans an incredible disservice to take a step back and go back to a two-car team. So, one, we would love to have Brad still be part of that journey. Obviously, that’s not gonna happen, but this is just a different path to the same destination. This is not a bump in the road and not one person in our organization sees it that way. We will miss Brad, no question, but the reality is we have a lot of faith in each other. We’ve got tremendous talent in our organization. We’re all committed to rowing together to get to where we want to go and the fact that we’ve got the support that we have from Roush Enterprises and Fenway Sports Group, not one individual has said slow down. It’s actually been the exact opposite, hit the gas.”
WHAT DOES THAT NEXT STEP ENTAIL FOR YOU GUYS IN TERMS OF PERFORMANCE AND IMPROVING FROM WHERE YOU ARE NOW? “I think it’s competing every single Sunday. We want to have a chance to win every single race. Hard stop. When you do that and you’re performing at a high level, then you’ve got guys in the Chase and you’ve got a chance at a Cup championship. We’re really excited that Ryan won a couple of races this year, one being a points race a few weeks ago. That’s awesome. It’s great for our organization. It’s great for our partners, but it just wants us to have more. You get a taste for it and you want more, so that’s what we’re focused on as a company. As we think about who we bring in to replace Brad’s role as head of competition, we want to make sure that person is the right strategic fit, the right cultural fit, someone who has a really good understanding of what it’s gonna take to be great, and that’s gonna be where we are hyper focused. That will be the next step in our process. As I run a parallel path to think about who our third driver is gonna be, which is gonna take some time, we are already out in the market. We’ve hired a third party search firm and CAA Sports to assist us with that process and we’re excited about the number of people that we know are gonna be interested in this role.”
WITH HIS DEPARTURE HOW DO YOU NOT LET HIS DEPARTURE FRACTURE TEAM MORALE? “Brad has had a large part given his role in helping us build the culture that we have today, but, as you know, culture is not led by one person. It’s led by many and a lot of that credit goes to all the people in our organization who see the vision of what we’re trying to accomplish. It starts at the top. I’ve got a mentor in our business who always says the best recipe for success in professional sports is three ingredients – ownership, ownership and ownership. So when you’ve got great ownership at the top, who trickle down the communication of we want to be great and this is what greatness looks like in our eyes and we want you to be a part of that, it’s hard not to get fired up and enthusiastic. Brad was a key voice in that conversation, but so are so many other people. That’s why his voice will be missed, but we know there are gonna be a lot of other people to pick up the mic and make sure that our voices are heard.”
WITH BRAD MOVING ON, WHAT IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY ON HOW YOU CAN BECOME MORE OF A FOCUS ON THE FORD INFRASTRUCTURE? “Partnership is everything and with partnership comes a lot of listening. We need to have a better appreciation from Ford and the other teams in the Ford family of how we can be additive to their process. It’s gonna take everybody for Ford to continue to race at a high level and compete against Toyota and General Motors and we get that. I will tell you that one of the things that we’ve got to do, and we talk a lot about it is our voice gets louder when we win more, so winning is the key thing. So, yes, should we do a better job of communicating effectively across the Ford group? Of course. I think every single person would tell you that, but it starts with listening and that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ll be continuing our effort along those lines and committed to that process, but the best way for us to have a bigger platform with any relationship, our partners, internally, you name it, we’ve got to do a better job of making winning the main thing and that’s what we’re gonna focus on.”
YOU KNOW THE CLUBHOUSE ATTITUDE AND THAT WHOEVER MANAGES THE TEAM MEANS A LOT. WHERE DO YOU FIND SOMEBODY TO FILL THAT CULTURE ROLE AND HOW KEY IS HAVING OWNERSHIP THAT IS ACTIVE IN THE ORGANIZATION’S SUCCESS? “I think back to the culture piece, to answer the first question, I’m a firm believer, and I’ve seen it in a lot of successful organizations, you mentioned my time working in a clubhouse. I’ll tell you that when I was with the Golden State Warriors, a lot of the culture in that organization bubbled up. It wasn’t just a trickle down, and so a lot of the bubbling up with great organizations comes from the locker room. I’ve had conversations with Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece about the opportunity that’s in front of them now. These are two really smart guys, really good racers. We have a DNA in our organization of being a racing organization. We embrace that wholeheartedly. We want to make sure that moving forward we do a better job of having group think. I want them to use their voices. They’re on the track. They recognize talent. They understand what’s going on with the car. We need to do a better job, and this is not a knock on Brad or anybody, it’s just I think as you evolve as a company and you take the next step, it takes more people leaning in and using their voice to achieve what you want to achieve. So, we’re gonna be looking for that next person to help lead that. It will not be expected of them that they are the sole beginning and end of building our culture. They’re there to be a voice in the building of that culture, but they’re really there to help us build strategy and build fast race cars. Ultimately, how we get along, how we think about what we do as an organization and what we set out to achieve, that should be a collective conversation and that includes ownership. That includes Roush Enterprises and that includes Fenway Sports Group and we’ve had a lot of conversations about that. I think they have always, but just so this group knows, they’ve been extremely supportive every single day of every week of every month of every year. They just choose to afford to give the ability of the people who are on the ground, afford them the opportunity to lead. I think moving forward they will continue to be more present, not because they feel like they need to, but also because they want to make sure that the organization believes what they’re saying. I think that’s important for them to see it optically as much as hear it, and we’re gonna do a lot more of that moving forward.”
HOW AGGRESSIVELY ARE YOU SEARCHING FOR THAT THIRD CHARTER? “Extremely. I’ve said this a number of times in different forums, there’s not a day that goes by that we’re not thinking about it, planning on it. I don’t talk about it publicly because I don’t know that it helps our process very much. We’re trying to be very strategic around what an acquisition of a third charter means. Certainly, it would be just transactional, and I get that, but if there are strategic alliances that can be created, if there’s a way that we find better ways to work with people through the addition of a charter, that we should be thinking about that. Look, just a matter of days ago our group reiterated to me we will buy a charter and we will pay for it. We just have to have one for sale and we’ve got to find the right situation for us and that’s what we’re working through. But there are a lot of conversations that will continue to happen. Patience is a virtue. Sometimes you sit back and you let things play out a little bit and the path gets a little bit more clearer.”
GIVEN THE AMOUNT OF PROPRIETY INFORMATION BRAD WOULD HAVE DUE TO HIS ROLE. IS HE SUBJECT TO ANY KIND OF NON-COMPETE THAT WOULD PREVENT HIM FROM RACING FOR ANOTHER CUP ORGANIZATION NEXT SEASON? “No. We’re not gonna hold Brad captive. We want, like I said before, this is not acrimonious. If Brad would like to go race somewhere else. If Brad would like to be an owner somewhere else. If Brad would like to lead competition somewhere else, he’s more than happy to do so. There are some things, obviously, we have to work out that we’ll do privately as it relates to his equity and that may take a little bit of time for all the reasons I talked about – just so there are no conflicts with our OEM or anything like that – but, look, Brad is an above board pro and so we have no concerns that he’s gonna take information from us or anything like that. We want Brad to be highly successful, so whatever it is he wants to do, we want him to be able to pursue it. It’s just unfortunate we couldn’t figure out a way to make it work here, but, again, it’s nobody’s fault. These things happen.”
IS THERE ANY PART OF YOU THAT IS NERVOUS ABOUT HOW THINGS COULD GO IF THERE WAS A POSSIBILITY OF NOT GETTING THAT THIRD CHARTER GOING INTO 2027? “No, and the reason being is that, one, we have the financial commitment of our ownership group to withstand any revenue loss by not having a third charter. I think a lot of times people are like, ‘Well, if you don’t have the third charter, you’re gonna make less money.’ That is correct, but back to my point about supportive ownership, they understand that sometimes things don’t happen as timely as we would like it. That doesn’t mean that our commitment to what we want to accomplish changes. It just means that we’ve got to be more patient. Our partners are tremendous. We sold out all of our sponsor deals this year. We’re growing our partnerships next year. We have a number of people coming back that are actually getting more races from us. There are a lot of great announcements that will be coming out in the coming weeks. We have wholeheartedly embraced as an organization the reality that we may have to run open next year, so with that sense of confidence that we can withstand an open year, we think we can do it for the foreseeable future if we have to. It’s not what we want to do, but we’re not gonna panic, and I think that’s the sign of real leadership as an organization when your ownership doesn’t panic and they stay the course because they believe so much in the people that work for them. That’s ultimately what we’re focused on right now, so we’re committed to our process. We’re not gonna veer off the path that we’re on and we’re excited about what our future holds.”
