Brad Keselowski cured a drought for Ford and for himself in Darlington yesterday, and it couldn’t have come at a more important time for them both.

“Honey, I won the Goodyear 400 Cup race at Darlington!” may not be the words every mom wants or expects to hear on Mother’s Day, but I’m guessing Brad Keselowski’s wife Paige didn’t mind hearing them after her husband broke a 110-race winless streak on Mother’s Day 2024. The 2012 Cup Champion snapped not only his personal skid by finally winning for the first time as a co-owner of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing (RFK), but he also rained a soothing shower of confetti on to manufacturer Ford’s drought in NASCAR’s top three series’.

Wearing a special Castrol livery as part of NASCAR’s “Throwback Weekend” theme at Darlington, Keselowski’s car showcased the white, green and red Castrol colors as they appeared on the legendary TOM’s Toyota Supra in the late 90’s, one of the baddest cars in the history of Japan’s Super GT series. Any kids who played the Gran Turismo video games back in the day will certainly relate to this excellent throwback. It would end up being a great irony on Sunday that Keselowski’s Toyota-related livery on his Ford would be seen so frequently clashing with a (slightly-lesser-known) Ford-related livery on Tyler Reddick’s Toyota Camry. (Reddick’s car featured an obscure graphics scheme that harkened back to Tim Richmond’s #29 Ford from 1982 that won the 75-mile Daytona 500 consolation race for the cars that DNQ’d)

Often known as “The Track Too Tough To Tame”, Keselowski and his #6 Castrol Ford Mustang had done enough to tame Darlington Raceway by the end of lap 293, crossing the finish line ahead of a charging Ty Gibbs in the #54 Toyota Camry by a mere 1.214 seconds, a gap that was 1, 214 times larger than that of last week’s (May 5, 2024) finish at Kansas Speedway that saw the #5 Chevrolet of Kyle Larson edge out Keselowski’s teammate Chris Buescher in the #17 Ford by an incredibly scant 0.001 seconds.

Proof of Process

With the 36th victory of his career notched at Darlington, Keselowski became the first owner-driver since Tony Stewart at Sonoma in 2016 to win a race. Apart from one of the Daytona Duels in early 2022 and a half dozen or so runner-ups since his last win at the spring Talladega race in 2021 while still driving for Team Penske, this ranks as his largest personal success to date as a co-owner of RFK Racing.

This win comes at a critical time for both Keselowski and RFK’s manufacturer partner, Ford; while Keselowski’s personal dry spell had lasted 110 races, Ford Performance had been winless in all three top NASCAR series’ (Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks) since November of 2023 when Xfinity Series champion Cole Custer secured his 2023 title by winning the final race of the year in Phoenix. While Ford clinched all three series championships last season with Ryan Blaney (Cup), Cole Custer (Xfinity) and Ben Rhodes (Trucks), their last Cup victory came at Martinsville (VA) in late October when Blaney locked himself into the Round of 4 with a sterling drive on the legendary short track in his #12 Ford Mustang.

Keselowski’s triumph should serve as perhaps the final validation of his decision to leave Team Penske at the end of 2021 to become a co-owner of what was then Roush Fenway Racing. Of course, a Cup championship would place an even larger crown on these efforts, but at the very least this win in Darlington ties a massive bow atop the RFK rebuilding process that Keselowski instigated in 2021. While many have questioned Keselowski’s decision to leave the stable comforts of Penske for the uncertainties that come with buying into a team with serious struggles, Keselowski has all but silenced the doubters and proved that his Hall of Fame career has truly and successfully entered a new era.

Oh, and thus far in 2024 he’s outperformed his former Penske teammates (Joe Logano & Ryan Blaney) and his successor (Austin Cindric).

Inarguably the flagship of the RFK fleet, the #6 Ford had not won a race since David Ragan’s win at Daytona in July of 2011, while that iconic number had been absent from victory lane in Darlington since its most iconic driver ever, Mark Martin, won in September of 1993. With team founder, co-owner and Ford stalwart Jack Roush looking on, Keselowski finally returned the #6 to glory in the waning daylight of Mother’s Day. I love the smell of vindication in the evening.

Close Only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

Ford drivers have come painstakingly close to snagging wins in 2024, particularly in Cup and Xfinity with multiple agonizing photo finishes that will surely haunt the auto giant, its race teams and fans for a long time to come. Defending Cup champion Ryan Blaney missed out on a win in Atlanta in February after coming up second in the middle of a 3-wide finish, losing out to race winner Daniel Suarez by 0.003 seconds. At Texas Motor Speedway in April, winless veteran Xfinity driver Ryan Sieg and his Ford lost out to JR Motorsports’ Sam Mayer and his Chevrolet at the stripe by a margin of 0.002 seconds.

The best of the worst however came in the form of Chris Buescher’s gut-wrenching loss to Chevrolet’s Kyle Larson at Kansas Speedway on May 5th by a series-record 0.001 seconds, the results of which were confused and debated at the moment the finish occurred and by fans for sometime afterwards. All of this and we haven’t mentioned Austin Cindric being crashed out of the lead pack at the Daytona 500, Buescher’s runner-up in the spring Phoenix race, or the anger-inducing crash between Keselowski and fellow Ford driver Michael McDowell within feet of the finish line at the Talladega spring race that gifted Toyota driver Tyler Reddick the win.

Many have blamed Ford’s all-new Mustang body, the Dark Horse, for the teams’ lack of success on-track as the regular season neared its halfway point. Others blamed the teams for bad strategy calls, poor driving decisions or pit road mistakes. Still, others chocked it all up to bad luck, growing pains sorting out the new car body or NASCAR themselves enacting some kind of conspiratorial bias against the OEM. As is so often the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle of it all (likely sans conspiracy stuff, it’s worth pointing out), as top-level motorsport carries with it a number of variables so vast that one mind cannot hope to comprehend it all.

The question had been asked for weeks if Ford teams should smash the “panic” button at their respective factories. “Is the Dark Horse a flop?” pundits could be heard asking. Only time will tell if this current stock car iteration of Ford’s venerable Pony Car can achieve similar success as the last two generation, but it would seem that the teams are slowly starting to round a corner with it. After all, Ford did secure half of the top-10 finishing spots in Darlington, including a happy surprise in the form of Josh Berry finishing P3 in the #4 Ford.

Whatever the case may be, the Ford teams have shown flashes of potential all season long and finally the gods of tire wear, mechanical durability and good luck allowed that potential to bear fruit with Keselowski’s win at Darlington. BK finally breaking his winless streak and finally getting an owner-driver win for RFK might be the big feel-good story of the weekend, but elsewhere in the NASCAR field and within his own team, frustration and heartbreak were rampant.

Don’t Beat Around The Buescher

Enter Chris Buescher, driver of the #17 Fifth-Third Bank Ford Mustang in Darlington. Buescher is one of those wildly-underrated drivers who simply just grinds in his quest to find success. Typically a pretty reserved personality on pit road and in the garage area, Buescher’s frustrations reached a rolling boil Sunday as the sun set on South Carolina.

With the past week’s 0.001 heartbreak still fresh in mind, Buescher found himself battling Toyota driver Tyler Reddick for the lead with the laps quickly winding down in the Goodyear 400. Reddick would attempt an aggressive slide-job on Buescher by diving low and hard into the tighter confines of Turn 1, only to find himself plowing up the track and dooring Buescher’s Ford hard into the wall. Each driver would quickly fall victim to tire damage (among other mechanical ailments) that would ruin the race for both of them, Buescher sinking to 30th and Reddick to 32nd out of 36.

As his teammate and team co-owner performed celebratory burnouts and a Polish victory lap for the crowd in the #6, the driver of the #17 found himself parked on pit road right next to the driver of the offending #45 Toyota, Tyler Reddick. With camera work redolent of a “C.O.P.S.” episode, the Fox broadcast team caught it all as a hotter’n hell Texan named Chris Buescher quickly traded his helmet for a hat and shades enroute to accosting Reddick about the Turn 1 incident. Reddick had only just extricated himself from his car and was trying to remove his helmet and neck restraint gear while a visibly and audibly frustrated Buescher laid into him.

Multiple F-bombs were deployed live on TV while Buescher admonished Reddick for his mistake that has now dropped Buescher down to a scant handful of points above the Playoffs cut-line. Buescher reminded Reddick that he (Reddick) already had a win sticker on his car and that he needed to be better in the choices he made, especially around someone like Buescher who had yet to secure a win and the secured playoff berth that comes with it.

To his credit, Reddick seemed incredibly guilt-ridden for his part in the incident and took full responsibility for the catastrophe, both to Buescher’s face and for the subsequent TV and radio broadcast interviews. Credit also to Buescher for demonstrably expressing his frustration without reverting to senseless violence (the shove of Reddick was pretty minimal) and for articulating his points to Reddick as well as you could expect any tired, overheated, and…well….overheated driver to do in that moment.

Ultimately, it was a poorly-timed moved on Reddick’s part as he likely could have shown a bit more patience and simply driven around Buescher a lap or two later given how much better his car was. This point is reinforced even more when you consider that Buescher was applying some Darlington stripes to the right side of his own car and losing critical momentum when Reddick pancaked him into the wall. The best I can say despite my bias to one party over the other is that it was still just two racers going for the win and it has to be chalked up as a “racing incident”. Same goes for their interaction on pit road post-race, its simply two talented, passionate racers working things out as best as the moment allows.

That said, while Buescher and Reddick have traditionally raced each other (and the field as a whole) on the respectful end of things for years, it remains to be seen how Buescher and Reddick will handle the fallout from this incident moving forward. The potential exists that this event could weigh some on Reddick’s psyche and result in him being overly-cautious or less aggressive for a spell. And, could we see a different Chris Buescher as the regular season winds down, especially if moving someone like Reddick or Larson out of the way on the last lap of a race could lock him into the playoffs?

For us Ford fans, we can only hope.