NASCAR Cup Series

What Brad Keselowski's penalty means for driver, team and NASCAR

Published Apr. 11, 2022 8:57 a.m. ET

By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer

MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Brad Keselowski, the recipient of one of the biggest penalties in NASCAR history, could have continued the appeals process by taking one more swing of the bat.

After a three-member NASCAR Appeals Board panel denied his appeal, Keselowski could have asked for a hearing with NASCAR’s final appeals officer.

Instead, Keselowski opted to grudgingly accept the penalty.

"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," Keselowski said Friday, the day after the appeals panel hearing.

But it’s not noise in the industry. It’s a message, one that NASCAR and teams will look to when determining how to approach assembling NASCAR Cup Series cars for years to come.

Brad Keselowski accepts NASCAR penalty

Brad Keselowski accepts his penalty related to the assembly of his Next Gen car. "We should have done a better job communicating with NASCAR," he says.

Keselowski understands why the penalty was so severe. NASCAR went to a new car this season, with most of the parts and pieces supplied by vendors, which is intended to keep costs down through teams not spending millions to research and develop parts and pieces.

With single-sourced suppliers, though, NASCAR needed to create a tough penalty structure to keep teams from messing with the parts.

When Keselowski’s car was inspected following the March race at Atlanta, he said NASCAR officials found a tail panel modification. NASCAR penalized Keselowski 100 points (he earned 31 points at Atlanta) and 10 playoff points (if he makes the playoffs) while suspending crew chief Matt McCall for four races and fining him $100,000.

NASCAR, citing the fact that Keselowski could still file for a final appeal until the deadline Tuesday, said it would not comment on anything about the Keselowski penalty or the infraction.

Keselowski said that because of the supply shortage with the Next Gen car rollout, his team had to repair the tail instead of acquiring a new one. He indicated that while they broke the rule, the position they were in could've led to breaking the rule without intending to do so.

"It had a key feature that NASCAR deemed was not repaired adequately enough, and it’s a tough situation," he 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."

Brad Keselowski on why his penalty appeal was denied

Brad Keselowski, whose appeal of penalties was denied Thursday, explains what his team was penalized for following the race at Atlanta.

So who was right and who was wrong? Once there are enough tails available, NASCAR possibly won’t let teams repair the tails, which they are allowed to at the moment.

"I wish we had, quite frankly, done a better job repairing it, but we can’t go back on it," Keselowski said. "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."

In order to learn, teams need to know exactly what was done. Several drivers have advocated for NASCAR to be more forthcoming about parts and pieces that are out of compliance as part of the more severe penalty system.

NASCAR has, in recent years, declined to offer specifics on infractions, citing the need to move on after an appeal is complete. But several years ago, NASCAR displayed illegal parts and pieces for everyone to see.

It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse game. If you show everyone what's illegal, they’ll know what not to do. It exposes secrets from one team to all the other teams — a penalty of sorts. But it also could allow teams to see a way to improve upon the illegal piece and create the same effect while making it more difficult to detect.

"We think we know what [they did], but we don't exactly know for sure," driver-owner Denny Hamlin said of the Keselowski violation. "There should be a level of transparency there. We know, generally speaking, if you go by the rules that NASCAR is giving us, we'll be in good shape.

"Now they have opened up some areas here and there because supply [shortages] and driver comfort stuff. ... [If] it was a big thing, it would be hard to convince them that you’re not trying to get an advantage."

Keselowski swears he wasn’t.

"Everything that we did was done in good faith, and it wasn’t somebody saying, ‘Hey, let’s cheat this tail up, and we can make the car go faster,’" Keselowski said.

"It’s pretty clear that that’s not the case, but it’s also pretty clear that we should have done a better job of communicating with NASCAR and with our process of repairing the parts."

Brad Keselowski on his playoff chances

Brad Keselowski assesses his Cup Series playoff chances with the 100-point penalty against him having been upheld.

As a co-owner of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, Keselowski sat in on the appeal. Most drivers try to not get involved, and even his teammate Chris Buescher has not focused on what happened.

"If I didn't get an email, I wouldn’t have known it was over," Buescher said. "It’s not something that I'm really interested in. It's not my side of things, and it just bogs you down from things you should be focused on."

Kevin Harvick, who drives for Stewart-Haas Racing, said the same. It is up to the competition director and the crew chiefs to handle the building of the car.

"I just do my job and let them do theirs," he said. "That’s the best way to do it. If I stick my nose in their business, it will just confuse things anyway."

That’s all fine and dandy until a 100-point penalty comes along. And to Keselowski, if NASCAR continues to hand down big penalties, then in some ways, his penalty can be looked at as justifiable. But it's one thing for NASCAR to say it will ramp up penalties and another thing to do it — and do it on a consistent basis.

"I feel like NASCAR is in a difficult position," Keselowski said. "We have a brand-new car that comes with a brand-new deterrence model. I think if you look historically, no, it would not have justified that level of a penalty, but that doesn’t matter.

"We’re in a new model and a new world, and NASCAR is doing the things that teams like us requested they do in heavily enforcing the rules. I think the ultimate test will be not us getting a penalty — it’s if somebody else gets a penalty of a similar nature for doing similar things."

Chris Buescher says penalty hasn't changed team's approach

RFK Racing driver Chris Buescher says the penalty to teammate Brad Keselowski hasn’t changed his team’s approach, and he didn't pay much attention to the appeal.

Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!

Thinking out loud

A driver in the infield care center with a shiner and an official in the care center with an unspecified injury were the result of a postrace scuffle Friday in the Xfinity Series.

Is fighting a good thing? The Sam Mayer-Ty Gibbs rumble following the race will be part of Martinsville highlight reels for years.

You never want to see someone get injured, yet you want drivers to show emotion. This interaction, though, got a little out of hand, especially with Gibbs ramming his car into Mayer’s on the cool-down lap and pit road following the race.

A monetary fine for Gibbs is likely in order to send the message that dangerous actions with a car after the checkered flag — and sending people to the care center — will not be condoned.

Stat of the day

On Saturday, Hendrick Motorsports led 98.5% of the Martinsville laps (397 of 403), the team's highest percentage led ever in a race.

Social spotlight

They said it

"I felt like last year left us with a pretty bitter taste because I felt like we were so close to a lot of wins in that second half of the year, and, man, it just felt like things would happen, and things would break down right at the last minute." — William Byron, who already has two wins in 2022

Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!