Photo: James Gilbert/Getty Images
The biggest surprise of the NASCAR season has been years in the making.
Roush-Fenway-Keselowski Racing has made massive strides since a rough 2022 season. After 2012 Cup champion Brad Keselowski joined the team as co-owner and driver, expectations were that he would right the ship and make RFK a contender overnight like Tony Stewart did with Haas CNC Racing in 2009.
That didn’t happen immediately, as both Keselowski and teammate Chris Buescher missed the 2022 playoffs. They eventually did start to show some substance. No performance showcased that more than the Bristol Night Race. The two-car team led a combined 278 laps and even when Keselowski fell victim to a flat tire, Buescher held strong as he scored his second-career win.
“There's been really bright spots that make you feel like you're going the right direction, and certainly Bristol last fall was one of them,” Keselowski said. “I really liked where we performed on the road courses last year and there's a few other spots. It's been a lot of incremental gains.”
The late-season surge led to another strong Speedweeks in 2023. While not winning either Duel like they did the year prior, the two worked well together at the Daytona 500 to lead 74 combined laps. They didn’t win, but they started to lead laps and become contenders every week, a far cry from the past decade.
The dam was inevitably going to break, which it did at Richmond. Again Keselowski’s race to lose was undone, this time by a pit road mishap. Buescher took the lead and never looked back, surviving a late restart to score the win.
Then he did it again the next week.
Just like that, a driver that had never been in the spotlight was the hottest driver on the grid. He had doubled his career-win total in eight days, fending off guys like Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano and Martin Truex Jr. in the process.
For Buescher, a Roush prospect dating back to 2009, having paid his dues at Front Row and JTG-Daugherty, the overnight breakout was surreal.
“I wouldn't want it any other way,” Buescher said. “It makes you appreciate it when you get to this level that much more and it makes it that much more fun to be here now.”
The team’s finest performance to date came at Daytona. Running nose-to-tail on the green-white-checkered, Keselowski didn’t move out of line. A driver who hasn’t won since April 2021 made sure that his team would go 1-2, pushing Buescher ahead to his third win of the season.
It shows a new perspective that Keselowski has, which has helped reshape the culture of the team.
“Everyone's happy when they're winning,” Keselowski said. “It's a lot of buy-in to the processes that you know, we've been trying to put in and that's always super helpful. That's at all levels top down.”
RFK currently has their first three-race winner in a season since Matt Kenseth in 2012 and the first time having multiple playoff drivers since Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle in 2014. They’ve worked to retake their position as the top Ford team.
“We're in a good place here,” Buescher said. “We certainly have made a big swing at it. [Keselowski] has done a fantastic job.”
Despite all this, Keselowski knows that they haven’t fully arrived until the team starts dominating weekends.
“We want weekends where we sit 1-2 in qualifying and we're leading the most laps and win pretty handily,” Keselowski said. “We need to dominate a race. That's the elite level for me.”
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