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This past week, Brad Keselowski channeled his inner “Rowdy” Roddy Piper who once declared “Just when they think they have all the answers, I change the questions.”
Or perhaps, for those who thought that Silly Season was over and we could concentrate on the Chase, it was more a reference to Animal House’s Bluto Blutarsky who once said “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Nothing is over until we say it is!”
And so, suddenly, Silly Season is back in session with new questions and very few answers. Where is Brad, who says he will remain an active driver, going to go? Who will take over the #6 Ford for RFK…and what will they call the team?
No matter what pop culture references you want to toss out, the announcement that Brad Keselowski would be leaving RFK Racing at the end of this season was as much of a shocker as his leaving Team Penke in favour of a struggling Roush-Fenway Racing to start the 2022 season. While Keselowski had not found a lot of on-track success at RFK for himself, he seemed to be helping to right the ship, with Chris Buescher becoming one of those under-the-radar success stories and Ryan Preece had overcome his demons at Daytona to win the Coke Zero 400 in August. Both Beuscher and Preece made the Chase in 2026 with Keselowski being the odd man out. While RFK might not have seen the success as Roush Racing had in the early 2000s with Mark Martin, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and others, it seemed as though there were steps being taken in the right direction.
Perhaps there weren’t enough steps being taken. Perhaps while Brad saw some progression for RFK Racing as a whole (two cars in the Chase), he wasn’t happy that he was, to a degree, being left behind. Some of this movement may have to do with RFK having to run a third car without a charter and Kroger, the current sponsor for Buescher’s #17 Ford, not wanting to bring their sponsorship to an unchartered car. I’ve heard reports that Keselowski had made some sense of his frustration about Ford’s competitiveness. Obviously, wherever Brad winds up, it will be the first time in 14 years (when Penske left Dodge for Ford after Keselowski’s Cup championship) that Brad will be in anything that doesn’t have a Blue Oval on the grill.
Of course, the rumours are flying that Keselowski could end up at Kaulig and be part of the team’s move from Chevy to Dodge, becoming the perfect bookend to the manufacturer’s absence from the Cup Series. Ironically, just this past weekend, I was thinking about how Kaulig’s overall performance had been hurt since their decision to go to the Cup Series, leaving their highly successful O’Reilly Auto Parts Series for “Trophy Hunting” and then to start a five-entry Truck team for Dodge. If Keselowski believes that his road back to success in the Cup Series is going to come through Kaulig…well, Brad might find himself disillusioned after a year or two.
Most people are expecting John Hunter Nemechek to fill Brad’s seat at RFK but I did read one rumour that was rather intriguing. Forgive me for not remembering who wrote it but it stated that a financially-strapped Trackhouse Racing was going to sell one of their charters – and with it, driver Ross Chastain – to RFK Racing. Some might argue that Chastain could benefit from a change of scenery, especially after being left out of the post-season two out of the last three years. However, save for one Facebook post, I haven’t seen anything else that would indicate that this was just someone’s fantasy scenario. I think it’s much more likely that Nemechek gets the ride.
As for Brad’s destination, everyone immediately looks to another Cup ride, one that may not exist. In doing a little research, however, I came across a reference to “The Triple Crown Theory” that suddenly made the Kaulig scenario a bit more plausible. As referenced earlier, Keselowski is the 2012 Cup Series champion, a title he earned just two years after winning the then-Nationwide (now O’Reilly Auto Parts) Series championship. In both cases, he was running a Dodge. Could Brad be leaving RFK Racing AND retiring from the Cup Series, to instead return to the Truck Series in pursuit of accomplishing something that no one has ever done: Became a Triple Crown Champion? Greg Biffle, Austin Dillon, and Johnny Benson, Jr. have all come close, winning the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and a Truck Series championship. The late Kyle Busch, much like Keselowski, won a Cup Series and O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship.
It makes sense. A return to the Truck Series, where Brad Keselowski Racing ran for approximately a decade, garnering 11 wins. A return to Dodge, where he won his previous two championships. Of course, a championship may not just fall into Keselowski’s lap as Dodge and Kaulig may be more focused on making a Cup debut and Brad’s own Truck Series career has netted him only one win (a win at Bristol in 2014) in 66 wins between 2004 and 2015.
Still, if anyone could pull it off, it, even if he’ll be 43 by the time the 2027 Truck Series starts in Daytona, it might be Brad Keselowski. It would be another incredible achievement on his already Hall of Fame-worthy resume.
And to think that we figured this week’s big news from Brad Keselowski was going to be because of his on-track run-in with Carson Hocevar.
