When Brad Keselowski owned a NASCAR Truck Series team from 2008 to 2017, he didn’t do it in search of “outside recognition.”
However, he’s “glad that there’s a lot of that coming his way this year.”
The legacy of Brad Keselowski Racing has been unavoidable through the first 18 races of the NASCAR Cup Series season.
It’s hard to ignore when four of the five first-time winners — which ties a Modern Era record — have been alumni of Keselowski’s former Truck team.
Tyler Reddick became the fourth on Sunday with his win over Chase Elliott at Road America.
The parade of BKR drivers winning started with Austin Cindric in the Daytona 500 and continued at Phoenix Raceway with Chase Briscoe and at Circuit of The Americas with Ross Chastain before Reddick’s triumph. They all joined Ryan Blaney, Keselowski’s former Team Penske teammate, who earned his first Cup Series victory in 2017 at Pennsylvania’s Pocono Raceway with Wood Brothers Racing.
“It’s been a heck of a ride this year to see those guys take off and have success,” Keselowski told media members Thursday morning. “I will tell you I take great pleasure in seeing the drivers that (were) a part of that program be successful.”
Reddick, whose win came in his 92nd Cup Series start, competed in 62 races for BKR from 2014-’16 and earned three wins.
His Cup victory came relative late compared to the likes of Blaney, Cindric and Briscoe. Blaney won in his 68th start in his second full-time season, while Cindric won in his eighth start and Briscoe in his 40th.
Keselowski said that if you had asked him five years ago if he thought Reddick’s first Cup win would come on a road course, “I would have told you no way.
“Every driver has their own path. And sometimes it’s indicative of their talents. Sometimes it’s indicative of their situation,” Keselowski said. “I’ve always thought that Tyler Reddick is one of the most talented drivers and in my eyes he has taken huge leaps over the last two or three years with his preparation, that when combined with his talent makes for a formidable foe on the race track, formidable competitor, and he’s taking those leaps and in that process, his team has taken steps with him.”
Happy for you @TylerReddick
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) July 5, 2022
From our early gym buddy days to now a cup winner- You’ve earned it every step of the way… 😊👍🏻👍🏻 https://t.co/SJKHblTInb
Keselowski pointed to Richard Childress Racing and its involvement with the development of the Next Gen car as a key ingredient to Reddick’s success this year. Reddick has five top-five finishes so far. One more will tie his combined total from the previous two seasons.
“(RCR) put a lot of emphasis on the Next Gen car from day one, did a lot of the testing for NASCAR and built one heck of a notebook,” Keselowski said. “They’re reaping some of those rewards, they have some of the best cars in the garage. They earned it. And when I look at Tyler specifically … I guess I didn’t realize it had been 92 races. I mean, you could argue three or four times this year that he was the guy to beat, and some circumstances out of his control, took him out of winning a race. He certainly felt due to to win a race and his day came.”
When reflecting on the legacy of Brad Keselowski Racing, the new minority owner of RFK Racing wishes to be humble about the seeds he helped plant that are seeing their fruition. He prefers to share the recognition with everyone who was involved with the team while he raced full time in Cup.
“First off, I would say I don’t feel like I did a lot of work,” Keselowski said. “I hired a team of people who did the majority of the work. And they kind of lived and breathed at the team all the time. My responsibility was two-fold, it was to provide the vision. And that vision was really guided along my own experiences and what I felt like I needed to succeed when I was in similar shoes, and also the vision of philanthropic kind of giving back to the sport that’s given so much to me.”
Even when it comes to the topic of how he decided to partner with specific drivers, Keselowski emphasized the “collaborative effort” at BKR.
“I certainly scouted a number of drivers,” Keselowski said. “But again, I don’t want to take full credit for that. I also implored other people and employed other people to provide and solicit feedback on which drivers they thought had it had the talent to make it to Sunday as we used to say, and probably still say in a lot of ways. …. Ultimately, of course, I got to make the decisions, but there was a team of people there as well.”
Keselowski doesn’t want his former drivers to be the only thing people remember about BKR.
He’s also “equally proud” of the many other people in the NASCAR Cup garage who worked for him in other roles over the years.
“What probably doesn’t get recognized is the pit crew members that were part of that program that are now successful and in the Cup side,” Keselowski said. “There are a number of guys that go over the wall on race day and some that are mechanics on the race teams that have come through that program. And to see them grow up in it and become crew chiefs and become car chiefs, is really exciting for me as well.
“So it feels good. It really does.”