Keselowski Continues To Race Through the Pain
Patrick McDermott/Getty Images
By Dennis Krause
It certainly wasn’t the way Brad Keselowski wanted to spend the Christmas holidays, or after.
While on a family skiing vacation, Keselowski slipped on some ice and broke his right femur. The injury required immediate surgery and initial reports from doctors suggested he would be looking at a six-month recovery period — not good news with the Daytona 500 looming in just two months.
Prior to the 500, the driver of the No. 6 Ford Mustang Dark Horse and co-owner of RFK Racing was able to prove to doctors, and NASCAR, that he was fit enough to race.
To date, Keselowski hasn’t missed a race and is currently 16th in the NASCAR Cup Series standings — the final spot to qualify for the championship deciding 10-race Chase.
Keselowski admits it’s been painful at times, but he’s determined to keep going, despite the toll that it takes on him each week, both on the track and off.
“A lot of PT (physical therapy),” Keselowski said, describing what it takes for him to get ready for a race weekend. “I’ve got some great people around me. I’m just jamming in all the PT work with some of the best professionals you could hope to work with and I’m building stronger every week, but not as fast as I want to.
“Driving the race car is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it provides the motivation for me to really push my rehab and do things faster than normal, which is not a bad thing. But it’s a curse because, yes, when I get in the car it does hurt, it does pull me backwards. When I have the adrenaline and all those things, I don’t really notice it, but when it wears off, yeah, I’ve got to recover from that.
“The long airplane flights to the west coast and the crash on Saturday (at Phoenix Raceway) were not my friends, so I’ll spend most of this week trying to get back to where I was before I left for Phoenix and hopefully by Thursday or Friday before I leave for Vegas, I’ll be ahead of where I was last week and that’s kind of what my weeks have looked like. That’s just my world for hopefully only a few more months, but a reality nonetheless and I’m trying to make it all happen.”
What Keselowski does not want is to re-injure himself and face more surgery.
“I keep having x-rays. I’m trying not to be over-the-top about it, but I’ve got a lot of hardware in my leg that’s holding it together and if that hardware were to come loose it would be problematic for me at this time. The surgeons and everybody that did it did such an incredible job that that hasn’t been the case. I’m knocking on the wood right here that it stays that way and I’ll keep checking.”
Chris Graythen/Getty Images
One thing Kesleowski feels good about heading to Las Vegas Motor Speedway for this weekend’s Pennzoil 400 is that the RFK team is competitive and close to getting a win.
“That’s what we want,” Keselowski stated. “We want a breakout. My goal for the year is for RFK to win five races. We need more speed to do that.
“I like the execution we have. I think all three teams have run really smart races. I’m really proud of them. I’m proud that our cars are not falling apart. Mechanically, they’re sound. We’ve got some great mechanics and great work going on. Our pit stops have been, across all three teams, really strong and very high level. If we can just find some pace. We need to find and need a little bit of pace. Ryan Blaney and the 12 car, I think, is the fastest Ford on pretty much a weekly basis and they just have a lot of pace. We have everything but that.
“I like the moves the drivers are making. Even when I just remove myself, I like the moves that Chris (Buescher) and Ryan (Preece) are making. I like the pit stops. I like how the cars stay together. I like the strategy. We just need pace. If we can develop a little bit of pace, we can be a very dangerous team – our company, our organization across all three teams.”
Even though he’s just above the cut-line for the Chase, Keselowski doesn’t anticipate having to race more aggressively to improve his position in the standings.
“I don’t think so. We’re just kind of steady-eddy with all three of our cars, where we are like 10th to 15th I think in almost every race with all three of our cars, minus a wreck in Daytona at the end there for Preece. So, really just kind of steady as an organization. I don’t really see us being able to do anything huge on the strategy side.
“We’re just looking for a little bit of pace, and I don’t feel like we really need to be more aggressive because the pace isn’t there for that to really pay off. I think we need to be more aggressive with finding pace, but I’m really happy with everything else.”
A win this weekend by any of the three RFK drivers would certainly help to ease Keselowski’s pain on the flight home from Las Vegas.
Dennis Krause has spent decades covering all forms of motorsports, including over 40 Indianapolis 500s, with stints at WIBA Radio, PIT PASS - Radio’s Premier Motorsports Magazine and Motorsports Minute. Follow him on X @DennisKrause500 or motorsportsminute.bluesky.social or motorsportsminute on Threads or MotorsportsMinute+ on Facebook.