During Monday's delayed NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan, Chris Buescher held back Martin Truex Jr. to win his second race in as many weekends. It is the first stretch of consecutive wins for what is now Roush Fenway Keselowski since 2009, back when the team was a five-car juggernaut that served as Ford's clear lead operation in the series.
That success is just the latest in a series of major improvements for the team and for Buescher in particular. The operation is in year two as Roush Fenway Keselowski, with owner-driver Brad Keselowski joining team founder Jack Roush and major sports ownership operation Fenway Sports Group just last year. The team was in a McLaren-like rut for a decade after effectively losing their role as lead Ford team to Penske in 2013; now, it looks set to place both cars in the 2023 NASCAR playoffs and fight for its first championship since 2004.
When Keselowski moved from Penske to Roush, chatter around the series suggested that Roush largely gave Keselowski a stake in the team because it was a necessity to secure even an older top-level driver like Keselowski in a top-heavy, middle-light driver market. Keselowski has only been in victory lane as an owner (and not a driver) since, but he has led the organization forward as the most vocal of its three owners. While founder Jack Roush is rarely seen at the track and the owners of the Fenway Sports Group remain occupied mostly with operating the Boston Red Sox and other more traditional sports teams, Keselowski is the one giving interviews after Buescher's wins.
The addition of Keselowski to the team also coincided with the introduction of the Next Gen car. That major change to both the business model and the day-to-day operations of a NASCAR team created an opportunity for major improvement, one that the team has seized under its new name. Before Keselowski joined the team as an owner, its last win on a track without pack racing came in 2013. The team has won three such races since, including the two in the past two weeks.
While Buescher has been the one winning the races, Keselowski has also been a force near the front of the field in 2023. He sits eighth in unadjusted championship standings, putting him in comfortable position to make the convoluted NASCAR postseason field on points unless three separate drivers behind him in the standings win the next three races. If Keselowski makes the playoffs, he will have a real shot at a championship just as Buescher will.
That success comes as Ford's other teams struggle. Team Penske stalwarts Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney have a win each, but they sit behind Keselowski in the standings and have suffered a relatively disappointing year for a team that has won two championships in the past five seasons. The four-car Stewart-Haas racing is in even worse shape, with fifth-placed Kevin Harvick serving as a major exception while his teammates sit 24th, 25th, and 31st in the championship during what has been a lost, winless season for a two-time championship operation. In a down year for two other programs, RFK is carrying the torch for the brand's Mustangs.
That relative success in the Ford camp must be particularly satisfying for Keselowski. While he left Penske on good terms, Brad Keselowski was the team's first NASCAR Cup Series champion in 2012 and its leader through most of the years after re-joining Ford in 2013. He left for the chance at an ownership and leadership role in another team, one that may have already helped RFK get quick enough and consistent enough to fight with Penske in a championship battle.
Whether or not this performance carries over into the NASCAR playoffs is another story. Stewart-Haas, Team Penske, Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, and teams aligned with those four programs have taken the vast majority of the spots in the Championship Four since this format was introduced in 2014. RFK will have to break into that elite group for an equal shot at a title come Phoenix, then beat the competition straight-up on that track to actually win a championship. That is a tall ask, but one the team is more prepared to meet now than at any other point in the past decade.
