Keselowski leaving Bristol frustrated after close call

The way Brad Keselowski chucked his gloves at his race car after Saturday night’s race at Bristol would have one thinking it hadn’t been a good night.

He finished second to Christopher Bell. That second-place finish came with frustration over how the race ended, and a season that has given the No. 6 team plenty of disappointment. In this case, it was Keselowski’s second runner-up effort of the season, and just the third time he’s finished inside the top three.

“It’s the story of our kind of season,” said Keselowski, winless since the spring of 2024. “A 50/50 shot on a restart and I got the lane that couldn’t launch. It’s just frustrating. We had a great car, great strategy, put ourselves in position to, if not win, at least have a really, really solid day, and on that last restart rolled the dice and didn’t get anything good.”

The final restart came with four laps remaining in the race. Keselowski, who pitted for tires under caution, restarted sixth. He was the third driver in the outside lane behind Carson Hocevar, on the outside of the front row, and Alex Bowman. Zane Smith led the inside lane next to Hocevar.

“The [No.] 77 didn’t get a good launch, and then the [No.] 38 missed the corner and cleared him up, and the bottom lane took off,” Keselowski said. “It was a 50/50 shot and like everything else, got the wrong one.”

Keselowski shot the middle on the restart and came out in fourth place. He then went to the bottom in Turns 3 and 4 to move to second. On the final lap, Keselowski ran into the back of Christopher Bell in Turns 3 and 4, but it hardly moved the Joe Gibbs Racing driver.

“Oh, yeah, I thought I dumped him,” Keselowski said of whether he thought he had hit Bell hard enough to move him. “I was like, ‘Ugh, that’s harder than I wanted to hit him.’ It didn’t even do a thing.”

Keselowski led 33 laps in the effort. His average running position of 8.8 makes Bristol only the third race (of 29) that he's averaged a running position inside the top 10.

“There was a lot that happened tonight,” Keselowski said. “First, Goodyear, the tire worked. The temperature dropped to the threshold, and we got a tire wear race. It’s so freaking … I don’t know, there is some scientist somewhere that could have a big study on this one – how a five-degree swing of track temp changes it so dramatically. But I thought it was actually a really good race because of the tire wear. The bottom was dominant. A lot of bump-and-run passes. It felt like Bristol from 1995 in that regard.

“But we played the tire stuff, I thought, perfectly to win the race. Someone pulled out in front of me there and stopped, when I was leading, and I bumped into him and caused some kind of chain reaction. We got the yellow and were still going to be fine, and on the restart, the [No.] 77 spun his tires, and the [No.] 38 cleaned him out, and basically, all Chris (Bell) had to do was turn left. I had a shot at him down here on the last lap, and I hit him, but it didn’t do anything.”