Despite his NASCAR Cup Series postseason coming to an end Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Brad Keselowski said the No. 6 RFK Racing team had a lot to be proud of.
“We kept clawing and it just wasn’t enough today,” Keselowski said after finishing 18th. “I felt like I could have done a few things better, and obviously, it’s frustrating when you don’t advance and you don’t get what you want out of the day. But we’ve got a lot of great things going on, and we’ll learn from it and come back stronger.”
Admittedly, it was not the cleanest of days for Keselowski on the road course. It started with a pass-through penalty on lap 19 after he slid over the exit of the frontstretch chicane. A penalty is called when all four tires are on the opposite side of the blue curbs.
“We really recovered from that very well,” Keselowski said. “We got back up into the top 10 and then we just kind of faded a little bit, pitted for tires to try to claw as we faded. I think we faded to like 10th or so, and we pitted for tires, and I then had spun with (Ross Chastain).
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“We clawed back out of that to an 18th, which isn’t a great day, but it certainly could have been a lot worse.”
It wouldn’t have been a pass-through penalty had Keselowski stopped on the track, which the team initially thought they’d done. But it wasn’t deemed that way by NASCAR.
“There was numerous levels of confusion,” Keselowski said. “We thought we had served it with a stop before that. In the end, it didn’t really make or break our day.”
Keselowski’s spin with Chastain was with 17 laps to go. It was also in the frontstretch chicane.
Sunday, however, was a dual hat day for Keselowski. While he was eliminated from championship contention as a driver, his teammate and the car he co-owns, Chris Buescher, advanced into the semifinal round.
“I’m really happy for Chris,” Keselowski said. “Obviously, you’re never happy when you don’t advance, but if you look at where we were a year ago to where we’re at today, it’s night and day, and we want to make this same jump next year. There’s a level of patience that comes with that and building a team and company, and there’s a lot of great things that we’re doing.
“One day in this sport feels like it could make or break you, but it really doesn’t. I, at least, have a little bit of a longer-term view of the sport and what we’re trying to do and can see that we’re going to have the opportunity to come back next year and be even stronger.”