Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Brad Keselowski Media Availability | Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 6 RFK Ford Mustang, comes into this weekend’s elimination race on the Charlotte Roval with a two-point lead for the final transfer position. He spoke about being squarely on the bubble on Tuesday following the announcement that the NASCAR Cup Series will be going to Iowa for the first time in the 2024 season.
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 6 RFK Ford Mustang – WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE CUP SERIES GOING TO IOWA NEXT YEAR? “It’s certainly a historic day for NASCAR and for Iowa to announce the inaugural Cup Series date here next June, I’m really pumped for the community. I’ve advocated for a while that this facility have a Cup date and to see it all come together, I’m just really happy for everybody who has worked so hard for it. It’s a great story. Personally, I like the track. I’ve won there three times in the Xfinity Series and once as an owner in the Truck Series. I can’t wait to go back and hopefully win again. We’re all really, really pumped for this announcement and I’m sure the fans and the community are too. Every time we go to this racetrack there are so many fans that show up with a lot of energy and it’s really an exciting time.”
WHAT SHOULD JUSTIFY GETTING A CUP RACE? “I always look at a couple of things. I look at the quality of racing. I look at the community around the racetrack and how they embrace, and I look at the community at-large and whether they are excited about the event. I think those three things kind of aggregate together, to me, to make an event seem like it’s a big deal or not, and this one I think, in this instance, has all three of those things.”
PEOPLE ARE RABID FOR NASCAR IN IOWA AREN’T THEY? “Yeah. I think that’s probably the biggest thing right there is just the embrace from the community – from the top down. From the governor making time out of her day to be a part of the announcement, to the race fans that showed up, and it just shows how big of a deal this is to this community.”
CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE DEAL WITH THE WINDSHIELD FASTENERS? IS THAT A SAFETY DEAL OR CAN THEY GAIN PERFORMANCE BY A LOOSE WINDSHIELD? “That’s a good question. I think it’s probably a better question for them to answer than for me with respect to penalties, but I think as a whole we have a rulebook and there are a lot of things in there and a lot of them that make a lot of sense and sometimes they’re safety items and sometimes they’re performance items, and sometimes they can also be both and that particular item feels like it’s sort of a little bit of both.”
AS A TEAM OWNER, WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU FIND WITH OWNING A RACE TEAM? “I think one of the biggest challenges of owning a race team is keeping people motivated. We’re always trying to get them to pull the rope in the same direction, so to speak, and it’s easy for that to kind of get off kilter, where we kind of lose sight on common goals, and I think trying to keep the team and the 150-some people that we have at RFK pulling the rope in the same direction at all times is by far the biggest challenge.”
SOME TEAMS HAVE EMPLOYED ROAD COURSE RINGERS FROM THE SPORTS CAR RANKS. HAVE YOU DONE THAT AT ALL? “We don’t have anything imminent to announce or anything like that, but we’re open-minded to doing anything we can to improve our performance and if that’s bringing in a third party, then we certainly would always welcome that opportunity, assuming that it made financial sense.”
HAVE YOU EVER BROUGHT THEM IN AS A CONSULTANT FOR THINGS LIKE THE SIMULATOR? “Nothing on that level, no.”
PRESUMABLY MONTREAL WON’T BE ON THE SCHEDULE FOR NEXT YEAR. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THAT? “You can’t do everything. You do what you can when you can. We’re certainly always looking for opportunities for the sport and this is a good one here in Iowa. I don’t know what the full schedule is going to be for next year. Hopefully, it will be announced soon, so I couldn’t tell you what is or isn’t on the rest of the schedule, but I think that there’s always opportunities. I think one of the things that I appreciate the most about our schedule nowadays is there’s good disruption in the schedules, which I think keeps it fresh year to year, and I think that’s been a big win for us as a sport, so I think that’s encouraging. It also tells a story that just because a track might not get a date this year doesn’t mean that there isn’t an opportunity for them in years to come. I appreciate that personally, but I don’t know what’s on the rest of the schedule for next year.”
DO YOU THINK THIS CAR CAN PUT ON A GOOD SHOW AT IOWA AND HOW WOULD IT COMPARE TO A PLACE LIKE RICHMOND? “I think what makes Iowa and Richmond so much different is just that I’ve got Rusty Wallace, he’s sitting right in front of me here, so he’s gonna love my answer here, but it’s got progressive banking in it. That allows you to find clean air and do different things where you can move around the track. I think that was a really good design feature that helps combat some of the things that we’re always talking about with the aerodynamics of the car and traffic and so forth, so I’m interested to see that play out.”
IS IT A SILVER LINING THAT WHERE THE SPORT IS RIGHT NOW WE CAN GO TO SOME DIFFERENT PLACES THAT DON’T NECESSARILY SEAT 80,000 PEOPLE? “I think there’s a lot of positives about where we’re at right now as a sport. I think obviously we have great viewership and when you look at the different platforms we have with broadcast and TV and streaming and so forth, that probably affords us to be more nimble than we probably would have said in the past and I think also you’re seeing some of these racetracks make the investments that need to be made to step up. You brought up Gateway and the investments they made there were tremendous. When they came in, the new ownership group over there, all of the things they did to that track made it, to me, a Cup worthy track, so it’s nice to see that happening in a big market, too, in the St. Louis area. I don’t know if that’s a perfect answer for what you’re asking there, but I think new markets are never a bad thing for us. Sometimes even going back to markets we went to a long time ago, that can be fun as well. I think as a whole that whole schedule variability is something fun and exciting for our sport.”
WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE FOR YOU AT THE ROVAL? “I think for the Roval the biggest challenge is trying to know when to go for stage points and when to go for race points. There seems to be this tug of war that the teams all have and trying to balance that all out is a big challenge.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR ROAD COURSE RECORD AND DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT VERY MUCH? “I think every loss annoys you and if it doesn’t, you’re not really a great competitor. I work at and work at it and I haven’t had the results I’ve wanted. I’ve got a number of seconds and thirds on a whole bunch of road courses, but haven’t been able to punch through and that can be frustrating, but then you look at other tracks where I have punched through and said, ‘Wow, maybe I deserved that one and maybe I didn’t,’ so you just kind of take that as it goes.”
HOW DOES THE TEMPERATURE IN LAS VEGAS AFFECT THE RACING THERE? “That track is very temperature sensitive and it goes through big swings with a daytime race. There have been a couple different times we’ve actually finished in the dark and that’s a shift as well on how the cars drive, so it goes from having no grip to actually having quite a bit of grip and you just try to be prepared for that with how you drive the cars is the biggest challenge.”
WHAT ABOUT HOMESTEAD THE FOLLOWING WEEK? “I feel like we’ve had a couple really good runs, a shot to win it two or three times and it just hasn’t come together. We only race there one time a year, so I don’t have as many starts as some of the other tracks, but it just hasn’t come together for me. I think ‘15 was probably the best chance I had at winning there and I got beat on a late-race restart. It’s hard to say, but trying to be good as the cars lose grip is really important there.”
HOW MUCH TESTING DO YOU FEEL IS NEEDED AT IOWA? “I’d love to see an org test there. I think that would be good to continue to bring energy to the track, but also I think it’s good to have an org test every once in a while for the teams and the sport to work through different things, whether it be new drivers, new tracks, new tires and, in this case, probably a little bit of all three, so hopefully we’ll see that here, but I haven’t had any of those discussions.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT POTENTIALLY NO INTERNATIONAL RACE NEXT YEAR? “I don’t know everything that went into making the decision of where we’re racing or where we’re not racing, but certainly we like to do both and what it takes to put that together I’m not close enough to quite know what that is, and I haven’t seen the schedule to know what is or isn’t in it for 2024, but having an international race, I think, still remains somewhat of a priority for the sport. It doesn’t necessarily mean that has to happen next year or even the year after, but it’s something that I think is important for us to be working on.”
ARE YOU SURPRISED YOU ARE ABOVE THE CUT LINE AFTER WHAT HAPPENED SUNDAY? “A little. Yes, pleasantly surprised. It was probably more just a bigger kick in the pants that if I could have just finished that race off we’d have had a huge advantage over the cut line, but you take it in stride and you try to move forward. You cannot sit and dwell in this sport. You’ve got to move forward and outside of being here in Iowa to announce the event, it’s all hands on deck to be the best we can be at the Roval.”
WHAT IS IT ABOUT LOOKING AT YOUR SYSTEMS AT RFK THAT ALLOWS YOU TO EXECUTE SO WELL ON SUNDAY? “I just think we have some really great people at RFK. We’ve made some good decisions with our personnel over the offseason and over the last six to 12 months as a whole and we just continue to get stronger and stronger with those people and they’re making great decisions that help us execute at a high level. It’s a testament to our people and some of the resources as well, but mostly our people and the training that we’ve undergone here over the last 12 to 18 months to get to where we want to be as a company and I’m super proud of everyone at RFK.”
