Few of last season’s playoff drivers have had a rougher start to 2025 than Brad Keselowski. He and the No. 6 team stand 33rd in overall points four races into the year, 118 behind leader William Byron. Keselowski’s latest setback was a multi-car crash at Phoenix Raceway on Sunday (March 9) where too many drivers fought for too little room at the exit of turn 2 on lap 99. The No. 6 got collected in the wreck, knocking Keselowski out of the race with a 33rd-place finish.
Those types of issues have become all too common for Keselowski this season. He made it to the finish of the Daytona 500, but he got swept up in the lap 196 crash that saw new RFK Racing teammate Ryan Preece take a tumble in turn 3.
A week later at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a chain reaction crash on lap 151 caused Chase Elliott to spin directly into Keselowski’s path, ending his afternoon. Keselowski’s best finish so far is a 15th-place result at Circuit of the Americas, a race made nearly unbearable for the veteran driver when the cooling system in his racing suit failed. Keselowski was so overcome by the heat that he had to be taken off pit road on a stretcher. Talk about having a brutal “best finish” of the season.
It feels like Keselowski has just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, especially since things have gone okay for the other RFK drivers. Preece and the No. 60 team have garnered attention in the last couple of races, not for flipping any cars but for trying some outside-the-box strategies. Preece used a pit strategy to win stage two at COTA, earning stage points that helped to counteract a 33rd-place finish. At Phoenix last weekend, Preece and crew chief Derrick Finley devised a tire strategy that had Preece use the faster option tires when most of the other drivers did not. Although the No. 60 rose and fell through the field at times, Preece led 34 laps and finished a respectable 15th.
Meanwhile, Chris Buescher and the No. 17 team continue to be their usual consistent selves. After crashing at Atlanta, Buescher has rebounded nicely, finishing seventh at COTA after a late-race charge into the top 10. He had a similar type of race at Phoenix, starting quietly but crossing the finish line in fifth. It is Buescher’s best finish of the season so far, and he stands 10th in overall points, 56 behind Byron.
Keselowski is the only RFK driver whose results have been worse than expected so far. However, if last season is any guide, he will have several good opportunities over the next month to make up some points. The No. 6 team had an uneven start to 2024 as well. Through six races, Keselowski had scored two top fives, a 13th, and three 33rd place finishes. Those results made him the playoff bubble driver at the time, and there was little indication of what direction his season would go.
As the spring progressed, Keselowski began to heat up. He earned a pair of second-place finishes in consecutive races at Texas Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway. The Talladega finish was bittersweet because he had a shot to win on the last lap, but a late block by Michael McDowell slowed down both cars and set off a massive crash, allowing Tyler Reddick to slip by and take the victory. Still, that was the moment that Keselowski’s next win felt like a matter of when not if.
Keselowski’s victory ultimately came three weeks later at Darlington Raceway. It was his first win in a full-field race as an owner/driver, and it ended a three-year winless drought. More top fives followed in the next two races, and Keselowski looked like the dominant driver he had been during his Team Penske days.
Yet the momentum turned out to be fleeting. Keselowski ran decently for the rest of the season but rarely challenged for wins. The playoffs did not go his way, and he was eliminated in the Round of 16. The No. 6 team scored another second place at Talladega and had a great run at Martinsville Speedway, but the obvious highlights of Keselowski’s season were his Darlington win and the run of good performances he had during the late spring.
If Keselowski can bring the same level of performance that he had last year at several of the upcoming tracks, he will not stay down for long. The NASCAR Cup Series races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend, and Keselowski is excellent there. He has three wins and has finished in the top 10 in 13 of his 23 starts. Homestead-Miami Speedway will probably be more of a challenge for Keselowski, but after that, things line up very well for the No. 6 team. The following five races are at Martinsville, Darlington, Bristol Motor Speedway, Talladega, and Texas. The schedule mirrors the part of 2024 when Keselowski hit his stride.
Keselowski has a combined 13 wins at the tracks in the Martinsville-Talladega stretch. Texas is the only one of those tracks where he has not won, yet he has finished in the top 10 in his last six races there. He has been consistently strong at Darlington since becoming an owner of RFK, and the team’s short track program has substantially improved since he arrived. Although drafting tracks are often a wildcard, Keselowski’s six wins at Talladega speak for themselves.
Early in the NASCAR season, there is often a tendency to identify drivers who have gotten off to slow starts and point to their poor results as harbingers of a bad season to come. But not every driver who has a lousy start ends up struggling all year. It is too early to panic about Keselowski, especially with some of his strongest tracks coming up. Look for him and the No. 6 team to shake off the early season blues and make a turnaround soon.
Bryan began writing for Frontstretch in 2016. He has penned Up to Speed for the past eight years. A lifelong student of auto racing, Bryan is a published author and automotive historian. He is a native of Columbus, Ohio and currently resides in Southern Kentucky.