Brad Keselowski will make his 600th career start on Sunday in the Cup Series, a tribute to the adaptability of a 42-year-old who became NASCAR\u2019s first millennial champion in 2012.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a number I never dreamed of,\u201d Keselowski said before practice and qualifying at Martinsville Speedway, the 0.526-mile oval in Southwest Virginia where he will try to join Richard Petty as the second driver to win in his 600th start.<\/p>\n
Longevity is nice, but the co-owner of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing knows there\u2019s only one statistic that truly determines his value.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be judged as successful in this sport, you have to win and be a contender to win regularly,\u201d Keselowski said. \u201cI sense we\u2019re not far off, but we\u2019re also not there. So we\u2019re somewhere in this ambiguous spot. I\u2019m hopeful that we can push through with some sort of stellar performance and assert ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a winless 2025, Keselowski\u2019s team opened this year with Ryan Preece winning The Clash exhibition event \u2013 kicking off a season that\u2019s delivered its fair share of surprises.<\/p>\n
Tyler Reddick, also winless last season, has four victories in the first six races to build a massive points lead with the No. 45 Toyota of 23XI Racing, the team co-owned by Denny Hamlin and NBA great Michael Jordan.<\/p>\n
Before Reddick took the checkered flag at Darlington Raceway, the RFK Racing trio of Keselowski, Chris Buescher and Preece ran 1-2-3 for a stretch last week at what\u2019s been dubbed \u201cThe Track Too Tough to Tame.\u201d Keselowski led a race-high 142 laps for his sixth runner-up finish since his most recent win nearly two years ago, but he still felt inferior to Reddick, who won easily despite dropping deep in the field with an alternator problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were close last week, and this will be another of those opportunities that I feel really good about,\u201d said Keselowski, who has 18 top 10s in 32 starts at Martinsville, more than any other track. \u201cWe want to have that blinding speed like the 45 car had last week. We\u2019ve had close moments but haven\u2019t fully experienced it. If we can bring that, it\u2019ll make my day feel really special. There\u2019s a lot of talk about Tyler, but they won with flat-out speed that\u2019s rare in the Next Gen car era. The car was intentionally designed with some level of parity, so to see a group that wins on blazing speed, it\u2019s notable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The struggles of some title contenders also have been striking. Three-time Cup champion Joey Logano is coming off a season-worst 33rd at Darlington (as Penske teammates Ryan Blaney and Austin Cindric finished in the top five). Defending series champion Kyle Larson (32nd at Darlington) has only one top five, and Trackhouse Racing has only three top 10s among its three drivers.<\/p>\n
A few variables (increased horsepower, lower downforce, a new Chevrolet body) have contributed to the results shuffle. The Next Gen car, which is in its fifth season, is also known for sensitivity to adjustments, and its common chassis can make it easier to miss the setup.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt speaks to how easy it is to be off in the Cup Series, and by \u2018off,\u2019 I don\u2019t mean having a bad day, but the cars themselves,\u201d Cindric said. \u201cEverything is really sensitive, so the smallest piece or part or a decision can be how things fell. We\u2019re talking about tenths of a pound of air pressure making swings. Nothing really surprises me anymore. I\u2019ve been in that situation enough times to not jump to any conclusions over one race or one performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s 400 laps at Martinsville \u2014 a tough short track that favors experience \u2014 could be a regression to the mean.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point, everybody\u2019s going to get really close again because they have all the same parts and pieces,\u201d said Carson Hocevar, who drives for upstart Spire Motorsports. \u201cIt\u2019s just being able to put it together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hendrick Motorsports, the winningest team in NASCAR history, usually hits the right combination at Martinsville. Its drivers have a record 30 wins at the track and 11,455 laps led (the only team with more than 10,000 laps led at a single track).<\/p>\n
Keselowski believes his team\u2019s \u201csupercompetitive\u201d cars could end a victory lane drought in points races that dates to Buescher\u2019s win at Watkins Glen International on Sept. 15, 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing to not push through in the category that means the most,\u201d Keselowski said. \u201cOff the track, last year was the best we ever had at RFK. On track, it wasn\u2019t that remarkable. We have to perform well as a business and on the racetrack. This year, we\u2019re poised to do that at the highest level since I\u2019ve been here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spire\u2019s success<\/p>\n
Hocevar has finished an average of 8.2 spots better than last season through six races. He credits Spire\u2019s improvement in part to the arrival of Daniel Suarez, who came from Trackhouse Racing to replace Justin Haley in the No. 7 Chevrolet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a car struggles, it tends to be a distraction at times,\u201d Hocevar said. \u201cThey\u2019ve got to deviate from setups and ideas and just really halts the direction of the three cars\u2019 forward progress and sends them on an island. Daniel is running well and doing a good job, and that\u2019s eliminated the distraction that\u2019s kind of been there the last two years with the 7 car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Odds and ends<\/p>\n
Ryan Blaney (+550), who has won two of the past five races at Martinsville, is favored by BetMGM Sportsbook, followed by six-time winner Denny Hamlin (+525) and William Byron (+625), who has won three of the past eight at the track. \u2026 Hamlin\u2019s 2,722 laps led at Martinsville are his career best for a track. \u2026 Defending Cup Series champion Kyle Larson has seven consecutive top-six finishes (including a 2023 win) at Martinsville, once among his worst tracks.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP auto racing: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/auto-racing<\/p>\n
Nate Ryan, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brad Keselowski will make his 600th career start on Sunday in the Cup Series, a tribute to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-567264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}