When thinking about his career transitioning from a driver with Penske Racing to driver-owner with Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, Brad Keselowski has a simple way of describing the changes.
To Keselowski, it’s like cooking your own meal. You need to eat either way, but there’s a sense of gratitude that comes with feeding yourself with something you created.
“You’re hungry either way, whether you’re just a driver, or a driver-owner,” Keselowski said. “(But), that’s how I feel here. I feel a lot of pride in what we do because I know I’m involved in cooking it from scratch.”
Keselowski has established himself in the sport, having spent 11 years with Penske Racing garnering a number of accolades, from winning the 2010 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship to earning a NASCAR Cup Series championship in 2012, to name a few.
Yet, Keselowski is still seeking his first individual win since becoming a driver-owner at RFK Racing. He’ll look to earn that title in the Ambetter Health 300 at 3 p.m. Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The 16-year NASCAR veteran has seen success at AMS over the years, including two wins, five top-five finishes and 11 top-10 results in 18 starts.
Notably, he finished in second place last year behind former Penske teammate Joey Logano in a narrow finish at the Ambetter Health 400. He also finished sixth in a rain-shortened Quaker State 400 in July.
His experience racing in Atlanta coupled with the events of Monday’s Daytona 500 may have inspired some confidence. At Monday’s race in Daytona Beach, Florida, he positioned himself as high as second place before a crash that forced him to finish 33rd.
“We’ve got really good cars (with RFK Racing), we’ve got a pretty good strong team,” Keselowski said. “We’ve led a bunch of laps and probably could’ve won both (in Atlanta in 2023), just didn’t quite go our way.
“Coming back, I’m feeling really good about it.”
While Keselowski is no stranger to the track at AMS, he, along with drivers and NASCAR fans, have noticed both positive and negative attributes since the venue underwent renovations that were completed in December 2021.
For starters, according to Keselowski, the track itself hasn’t changed as much, there’s just a different way of getting around it.
He did note, however, there’s less control with drafting and other technical aspects of racing, but the challenges at the speedway mostly have stayed consistent over the years.
“You’ve got to really clear your throat when you make a lap around Atlanta,” Keselowski said. “That hasn’t changed. Race-car drivers never like giving up control, but as a whole I’d say I had a lot of fun.”
Other challenges include the access to getting on pit road, which Keselowski pointed out hasn’t necessarily changed from the old to the new track.
At the same time, however, he said he was pretty confident that NASCAR and its partners do a good job of evaluating and making changes when needed and expects that they’ll have a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t as time goes on.
As easy as it is to get caught up in the results, Keselowski, like other drivers, chooses to take the process-based approach to each and every race, and the ones at AMS are no different.
At the end of the day, Keselowski and his team can control what they can control, yet, sometimes you also need to catch a break here or there.
“Control what you control, and there’s some luck factors that go in there,” Keselowski said of his approach to the coming weekend. “(But) I really like the things that we’re controlling, and (we’re) doing it a very high level.”
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