Nearly three months on from his injury, Brad Keselowski has begun to find his feet once again. The RFK Racing driver and co-owner got injured in the off-season after slipping on the ice while skiing. But the comeback hasn’t been very memorable. Other than a P5 finish at Daytona, he’s had forgettable finishes, and among other factors, the injury is a major reason for it, something that he opened up on recently.
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Brad Keselowski’s injury and racing hustle
During an appearance on the Dale Jr. Download, Brad Keselowski explained how racing with an injury ‘is not fun.’ He claimed that he’s most comfortable in the car. But because of the injury, he finds walking to and from the car and getting out of it very difficult.
At the start of the season, Brad Keselowski not only had to pass a driving test at Charlotte to get behind the wheel of his racecar, but he also was relying on crutches to walk during the Daytona 500 weekend.
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“Even when you’re not hurt after you run a race, like you get out of the car and the first few steps, you’re like a baby deer, you know, like walking,” he stated. “You’re usually a little dehydrated, usually a little tired, hot, sweaty, etc. But then adding on top of that, like my leg, I get out and I have like all those, okay, this is what it’s like to stand again. And then my leg sore hurts a little bit like that’s like when it hits you, because the adrenaline starts to wear off.”
Keselowski added that once the adrenaline wears off, that’s when he begins to feel the effects and the pain in his leg. Having said that, he mentioned the worst part of having a leg injury while racing in NASCAR. It was him not being able to feel his own leg, to the point where he is now feeling like he’ll be over it anyway.
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In the past 173 starts, Keselowski has just won once in 2024 in recent years. He hopes to break his 63-race winless streak on Sunday in Vegas. Meanwhile, he also shed light on the playoff format’s exit.
Keselowski is relieved the playoffs are over
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During his conversation with Dale Earnhardt Jr., Brad Keselowski spoke candidly about his thoughts on the playoff format. The format, which was in practice from 2014 until 2025, was criticized a lot over the years by some major names in the sport.
Brad Keselowski was one of those names, too. However, he did his protests in private. He recalled having a conversation with Steve O’Donnell around 2018 where he told him, “The playoff format is killing the sport.”
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Keselowski further recalled how he ended up feeling like being in ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ in the middle of a season because of the playoff format. “I sit in meetings, and they’re like, ‘All right, Brad, uh you don’t get the good engine or the good car this week because someone else in the company isn’t locked in the playoffs, so they get all the good stuff for this week,’” Keselowski said.
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But he was told that when he gets to the playoffs he’d get the good stuff because he was the first car to lock in. So he found himself in the middle of the season at tracks like Pocono with an underpowered engine, a body with less downforce, 15th in practice, and knowing he would probably end up with a 10th-place finish, already locked in the playoffs. He claimed it made zero sense to him but he couldn’t even be mad at the team because they had to get their other cars in the playoffs.
Fortunately for Brad Keselowski and a big majority of NASCAR fans, the playoff format era is over. Keselowski claimed he is ‘a staunch supporter’ of the new format, a sentiment that resonates with a lot of drivers and fans too.