Keselowski looks to defend Talladega win, save season
Driver stuck in 30th place as he looks to jump-start his year with RFK Racing
The winningest active driver at Talladega Superspeedway just might be able to save his season on Sunday by defending last year’s victory.
Brad Keselowski isn’t banking on a seventh Talladega win, though. But if it’s in reach, well, Keselowski won’t hold back in search of his first victory since leaving Team Penske for an ownership stake at RFK Racing.
“We’ve got a great shot,” Keselowski said. “If we’re anywhere close, I’m going to leave it all out on the line.”
A penalty for illegal modifications made to the No. 6 Ford has devastated Keselowski’s first season as a driverowner and knocked him to bottom of the Cup standings, lower than any other full-time driver. It took him a month to climb from 35th in points to 30th — a mark he hit last week at Bristol that makes him eligible for the playoffs should he win a race.
His best chances at victory are likely at Daytona or Talladega.
Keselowski and teammate Chris Buescher each won a qualifying race at Daytona International Speedway in February, but the RFK organization has not won a Cup points race since 2017. The team won twice that year — both races on a superspeedway, with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. sweeping the two stops at the Alabama track when the team was known as Roush Fenway Racing.
The organization has not won on any type of track besides a superspeedway since a 2014 win by Carl Edwards at Sonoma.
So the speedway races seem to be Keselowski’s best shot to extend his streak of playoff appearances to nine consecutive years.
“I think there’s probably a little bit of truth to that, but honestly I’m looking at the next month and I’m really excited about the races we have,” Keselowski said. “I think we can win any one of them. We’ve got a lot of good stuff coming down the pipeline.
We’re starting to figure some things out and find some of the missing puzzle pieces, so I’m not ready to say that we have to win on a (superspeedway) to advance to the playoffs.
“I feel like we’re starting to find our game at other tracks, too. We have a lot more confidence in the cars, and the team is learning a lot.“
Game of numbers
Keselowski will start 15th on Sunday as the Ford camp struggled in qualifying. Joey Logano, his former Penske teammate, was the highestqualifying Ford driver at 13th.
Necessary aggression
Keselowski was aggressive in his ninth-place finish in the Daytona 500 and his pushing caused two different crashes. He said he’s not proud but “honestly, it was time to go and my car could have took the same push that I gave those cars.”
But when he arrived at RFK, he warned his new team that “I’m probably going to wreck out of a number of races this year.
“It’s going to be for good reason. Every time, I’m going to push the car as hard as I can push it and probably overstep it. Something is going to happen and then we’re going to come back and we’re going to make it better,” he said. “As long as those failures are coming from a push and not a silly
mistake, I’m OK with that, whether it’s me or anyone else in the company. We’ve got to push really hard if we’re going to get where we want to get. We’ve got room to go.”
Xfinity: Noah Gragson held off Jeffrey Earnhardt in triple overtime to win the Xfinity Series race at Talladega Superspeedway for his second victory of the season. Gragson restarted fourth on the outside of the second row but inherited the lead when JR Motorsports teammate Justin Allgaier ran out of gas and pulled out of traffic. Gragson had to work the No. 9 Chevrolet all over the wide Alabama superspeedway to hold off traffic and deny Earnhardt his first career victory. Earnhardt, the grandson of the late Dale Earnhardt, started from the pole in the No. 3 Chevrolet. His runner-up finish was a career-best. Formula One: Max Verstappen overtook Formula One leader Charles Leclerc on the penultimate lap to win the sprint race at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix and reignite his season. Verstappen started the sprint in pole position after finishing first in Friday’s qualifying, but the Red Bull driver was overtaken by Leclerc’s Ferrari as soon as the lights went out. But Verstappen doggedly pursued Leclerc and swept around the outside of the Ferrari into Tamburello then stormed away to secure victory and the top spot on the grid for Sunday’s grand prix. He finished 2.975 seconds ahead of Leclerc and 4.721 ahead of Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez.