April 8, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Brad Keselowski sets sights on future, puts penalty in rearview mirror

MARTINSVILLE, Va.—After Roush Fenway Keselowski appealed its recent L-2 level penalty and lost on Thursday, Brad Keselowski is ready to put the incident behind him and move on.

NASCAR penalized Keselowski’s No. 6 team 100 driver points and 100 owner points and suspended crew chief Matt McCall for four races and fined him $100,000 after the car was found in violation of Sections 14.1 and 14.5 in the NASCAR Rule Book, for the modification of a single source supplied part.

While neither NASCAR nor RFK would reveal what the refraction was prior to the hearing, Keselowski came clean following qualifying on Friday.

“We had repaired a tail panel and it had a key feature that NASCAR deemed was not repaired adequately enough, and it’s a tough situation,” Keselowski said. “We didn’t want to run the tail panel. We didn’t have any new tail panels to put on the car. We had a tail panel with three races on it and we did some repairs to it. We probably could have done a better job on the repair and we put NASCAR in a tough spot.

“It’s kind of like a trickle-down effect. I wish we had, quite frankly, done a better job repairing it, but we can’t go back on it. I understand NASCAR’s position on it. It’s kind of one of those things where everybody is right and everybody is wrong at the same time. Ultimately, we’ll have to learn to be better for it.”

Keselowski said the RFK elected to appeal the penalty to prove they didn’t want to run the tail panel and there was no malicious intent involved in running the used part. With the current supply issue woes, there simply weren’t enough pieces to go around. He said RFK currently has enough parts and pieces to cover the next two races.

While Keselowski admits suppliers are delivering parts more efficiently now than two or three months ago, he pleaded the fifth when it came to whether the current situation is ideal.

“If we had a new one, we would have ran it to begin with, so it’s a difficult position,” Keselowski said. “Ultimately, it’s NASCAR’s position that the parts and pieces have to be right. I think we made our repairs in good faith, but probably didn’t do a great job. Did I think there was a competitive advantage? Probably not.

But we put NASCAR in a tough position of having to make a judgment call and that’s not fair to them, so it’s one of those situations where I don’t think anybody is really wrong and nobody is really right and it’s probably one of those situations that if we could repeat, we would have begged, borrowed and stole a new tail and put it on the car, but that’s not the world we were living in. I’m glad that that’s being fixed, but this is the world we’re in now and we’ll go make the most of it.”

Should Keselowski qualify for the Playoffs, he will automatically be docked 10 NASCAR Playoff points due to the infraction. Given the current complexion of the point standings, he doesn’t see any driver advancing to the post-season without a win.

“I could see there being 15 to 16 winners this year,” Keselowski said. “I struggle to say there will be 17 or 18, but I don’t think there’s gonna be 10 either. I don’t think you’re going to make the playoffs if you don’t win races this year. Not that the penalty doesn’t hurt. Not that it’s not impactful. It is. I don’t think you make the playoffs without winning a race this year.”

Despite the loss of points, Keselowski feels taking RFK’s case to the Final Appeals Officer at the National Motorsports Appeals Panel is futile.

“It’s not go for broke, wins only, but I’m gonna try to get the best finish that we can get, put ourselves in position and hope for the best,” Keselowski said. “It’s time for us to move on and focus on what we need to win, and the rest of it is just noise to us.”