Friday 5: Michigan football team's national title inspires NASCAR Cup driver

A life-long University of Michigan football fan, Brad Keselowski admits that witnessing the Wolverines claim the national championship earlier this month in Houston gave him “mixed emotions.”

“Just trying to enjoy the moment and just be there as a fan,” Keselowski told NBC Sports of the experience at NRG Stadium on Jan. 8, “but it’s also a good reminder of like, ‘Hey, I want to be the star, too. I want to win races. I want to be cheered for. I want to be the champion.’

“Sometimes you need to see somebody else kind of live the dream a little bit.”

Keselowski, who has helped revive RFK Racing since becoming an owner/driver before the 2022 season, is focused on winning a second Cup title and his first Daytona 500.

“That’s all I think about,” he said.

He seeks to shed his membership among the group of stellar drivers who failed to win a Daytona 500. Keselowski has come agonizingly close to winning the sport’s biggest race in recent years only to see his bid end in flames or against the wall.

Martin Truex Jr. (winless in 19 Daytona 500 starts) and Kyle Busch (winless in 18 Daytona 500 starts) have longer droughts than Keselowski but one could argue few have had it harder lately than Keselowski.

He has been eliminated by a crash in five of the last seven Daytona 500s.

He’s made it to the white flag lap in each of the last three Daytona 500s only to make it back to the checkered flag once.

He has led 109 of the 413 laps run in the last two Daytona 500s — nearly three times as many laps as any other competitor in those races — and still not won.

“You can’t say (you want to) win the Daytona 500,” Keselowski said. “It doesn’t just manifest itself. You’ve got to do the work.”

Keselowski has done plenty of work for that race and in rebuilding his team. When Keselowski arrived, RFK Racing had gone winless the previous four years.

Teammate Chris Buescher won once in 2022 and had a career-high three victories last year. Keselowski continues to search for his first win with the organization.

The struggles are not new for him — even with his 35 career Cup victories. Keselowski says his first two years at RFK Racing remind him of his first two seasons at Team Penske in 2010-11.

Team Penske had won no more than two races a season in the four years before Keselowski began running full-time for the team.

While Team Penske has won three of the last six Cup titles — including the past two — it didn’t win its first series crown until Keselowski did so in 2012.

Keselowski went winless in Cup in 2010 at Team Penske. He had more top 10s (six) in his first season at RFK Racing (2022) than he had in his first full-time Cup season at Team Penske. He won three races in his second season at Team Penske but had fewer top 10s (14) than he did in his second season at RFK Racing (16).

“It took me three seasons at Penske to turn it into what I felt was a championship contending team,” Keselowski said. “There’s no light switches. There’s hundreds of people. You don’t flip a switch and get 100 people pulling the rope the same direction overnight. It takes time, and some people stay with you and some don’t. Some of it is by choice, some of it is not. But this part of the journey.

“Last year felt a lot like my 2011 season at Penske. … I’m looking for this year to be very similar to my 2012 (championship) season. I think we’re going to have really good cars and we’re going to have a shot of winning four or five races and, ultimately, a shot at a final four and a championship.”

Keselowski is enthused by the progress RFK Racing has made after what he calls a “strong offseason.” He said the team has improved its aero and engineer groups.

“We brought in probably a dozen good people,” he said. “They’ve made some advancements on our cars that are exciting. Pit crew is in a really good spot. Engineers are in a good spot. So we’ve got a lot of positives, the new Ford car is outstanding. We’re very well positioned for 2024.”

Now it is a matter of turning that potential into victories.

2. Cleaning house

Motivation can come in many ways. For Denny Hamlin, it comes in cleaning his house each offseason.

“Every year, I have an entryway at my house that has a bunch of trophies, hopefully, at the end of it,” Hamlin told NBC Sports.

“On January 1, I clean it all off so there’s nothing. … There’s nothing until I accomplish something that year that then I can put on display. I always clean out my old accomplishments and drive myself to accomplish new ones.”

Hamlin said he started using this motivation tactic a few years ago.

“I love the task of trying to fill up the trophy case after I clean it out every year,” the 43-year-old said.

Hamlin had several trophies on display last year. He won three Cup races and four poles, one Xfinity race and one SRX race.

He enters this season with 51 career Cup victories and has stated a goal of winning 60 races in the series.

Hamlin has won either the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600 or Southern 500 in six of the last eight seasons. No other active driver comes close to matching that in the same span.

Hamlin’s wins in those races since 2016:

2016 — Daytona 500

2017 — Southern 500

2018 — Did not win any of those three races

2019 — Daytona 500

2020 — Daytona 500

2021 — Southern 500

2022 — Coca-Cola 600

2023 — Did not win any of those three races

If one considers the Bristol night race as the fourth of the sport’s four majors — replacing Indianapolis after it went to the road course beginning in 2021 — then Hamlin could include a Bristol night race win in 2023 to that list. Hamlin has three career Bristol night race victories (2012, ’19 and ’23).

A healthier Hamlin could add more major wins to his collection this season.

He is expected back for the Feb. 4 Clash at the Coliseum after having offseason shoulder surgery.

“Am I going to be 100 percent (at the start of the season)? No, that’s not until probably March or April that I’ll be 100 percent,” Hamlin said. “But I certainly will be better to start this year than I ended last year.”

3. Water the plants

Coming off a breakthrough season that included a series-high six wins and his first appearance in the Championship 4, William Byron looks forward to this season with excitement and some anxiety, he confesses.

“I feel like it’s every year that I have that, but it is maybe a little more just because of how we did (last year) and in wanting to either repeat or do even better and knowing it’s going to be a lot harder to do it again,” Byron told NBC Sports.

Byron said even as he puts last season behind him, it still is impactful.

“The confidence carries over for sure that you can do it,” he said.

Byron finished first or second in a quarter of the 36 points races last season.

He scored victories at Las Vegas, Phoenix, Darlington, Atlanta and Watkins Glen in the regular season and also won the Texas playoff race. Byron had three runner-up finishes (Coca-Cola 600 and playoff races at Talladega and the Charlotte Roval).

“I feel like a couple of years ago, the goal was just to try to run in the top five and try to run in the top 10 consistently,” he said. “Now, it’s trying to win multiple races a year and put yourself in those positions, but you have to continue to kind of water the plants and groom everything with your team.”

Wait a minute. Water the plants?

“You’ve got to maintain the good things that you build or else it’s going to die,” Byron said. “You’re either going to get better or worse.”

So will there now be a plant in the No. 24 shop to symbolize watering the plants?

“Chad,” Byron said of recently inducted NASCAR Hall of Famer Chad Knaus,” used to have a bonsai tree in there … that he would have to water every day. So maybe that’s where I got it from.”

4. Don’t forget but move on

A new season gives Martin Truex Jr. and his Joe Gibbs Racing team the chance to forget last season’s playoff woes after winning the regular-season championship.

But Truex said that looking back on the past can be helpful — even after what happened last year.

Truex won three races in the regular season to earn the No. 1 spot for the playoffs. He finished in the top 10 in 12 of the last 16 regular-season races.

Mistakes and misfortune struck often in the playoffs. He did not score a top 10 until the seventh playoff race. Truex narrowly avoided elimination in the first two rounds before he was eliminated in the Round of 8.

“You always look at the past,” Truex told NBC Sports. “That’s kind of how you learn. You learn from mistakes. You learn from bad seasons as much as you do from good ones.

“I think for us, our outlook for racing is, you know, last year went well for a while and we kind of lost it in the playoffs. How do we make sure that doesn’t happen again? That’s really going to be the goal but also did a lot of good things last year. Can we continue those and how do we continue those?

“I think the past is always important in anything, in life in general. … So I always try not to forget all about it, but also don’t focus too hard on it.”

5. NASCAR musings

NASCAR officials stated in a briefing this week with reporters that Kyle Larson likely will keep his starting spot for the Coca-Cola 600 even if he misses the drivers meeting and/or driver introductions because he’s running in the Indianapolis 500 earlier that day.

NASCAR rules state that series officials may penalize a driver for missing the pre-race meeting or intros by sending them to the rear of the starting lineup.

“We’ve made exceptions in the past for other reasons,” said Brad Moran, managing director for the Cup Series. “I would probably imagine that we would not want to put (Larson) to the rear for that reason — that the drivers meeting has changed quite a bit from what they used to be and all the information is sent to them. So, I would pretty much bet that he wouldn’t go to the rear (for missing the meeting and/or intros).”

Daytona International Speedway has paved over some grass on the backstretch and will pave more of the grass section after the road course’s bus stop after the Daytona 500. That is the area Ryan Preece rolled several times last year.

NASCAR also revealed some tweaks to qualifying this week.

Should a competitor spin and have flat tires, series officials will have the vehicle placed on a dolly to go to the garage without risking further damage to the vehicle. This won’t be used in the race at this time, NASCAR stated.

Also, cars that fail to advance to the final round of qualifying will be aligned in the starting lineup differently this year.

Cars in Group A of qualifying that fail to make the top 10 will be placed in the outside spots from the sixth row on back in the starting lieup based on their qualifying speed within the group. Those in Group B will be aligned on the inside of each row from the sixth row on back.

Previously, starting spots from 11th on back were set based on speed regardless of what group a car was in. The change, NASCAR states, makes it more fair instead of one group having several cars that are faster because of an advantage of when they qualify compared to the other group

NASCAR also stated that the plan is for tire packs to be placed along the concrete wall inside Turn 1 at Nashville Superspeedway. Ryan Blaney hit that concrete wall in last year’s race and was upset that there was no safety barrier in front of the wall.