NASCAR Notes: Consistent RFK Racing; Briscoe Shines
NEWTON, Iowa — RFK Racing has yet to win a NASCAR Cup Series race this season, but the three-car team has enjoyed consistent results over the second half of the regular season.
On Sunday at Iowa Speedway, team co-owner Brad Keselowski and Ryan Preece finished third and fifth, respectively.
Keselowski led 68 laps en route to his third-place finish.
“Obviously, we want to win but we’re in contention, that’s for sure. We will keep putting solid runs on the board and I think this will come to us,” Keselowski said. “We have some pretty strong Ford Mustangs right now. Blaney was really fast there at the end. He had a little bit newer tires and he was running us down. I feel like I was going to get the 19 but Blaney was going to pass me. It was a solid day, we just needed a few more things to go our way.”
Keselowski had a dismal start to the season and didn’t score a top-10 finish until the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the sixth race of the season. Sunday marked his fourth top-five and seventh top-10 effort.
Preece, who is 13th in the standings, recorded his fourth top-five and 10th top-10 effort.
• Chase Briscoe has emerged as a championship contender aboard the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Briscoe, who won his series-best sixth pole on Saturday at Iowa Speedway, raced to a runner-up finish in the Iowa Corn 350.
It was his third second-place finish in the fast four races. Briscoe, who won a Pocono Raceway in June, has nine top-five finishes this season.
“I was kind of the second best there at the end. It just kind of died there at the end of the run,” Briscoe explained. “I don’t know, we’ve been in position enough, running second like that, you’re going to end up winning some of them. It just hasn’t went our way the last three or four of them, so hopefully next week it’ll be that way.”
• Ryan Blaney had one of the fastest cars on the track at the end of Sunday’s race at Iowa Speedway as he brought his Team Penske Ford home fourth for his ninth top-five effort of the season.
“Honestly, it sort of surprised me just how hard those guys tanked at the end and my car kept chugging along,” Blaney explained. “I ran Brad down but everyone is so free it is hard to pass anybody. You are scared of spinning out and you are creeping around the bottom, but it was a fun race. I am really proud of our group for sticking with it.”
The 2023 Cup Series champion feels momentum on his side.
“Really good showing and just keep going. It has been a good last few weeks for us,” he said. “I think the speed is there, just have to keep putting these races together. We had a good shot to win today but it just didn’t work out. The strategies just got really weird with all those cautions. We were on the back end of it and it just kind of cycled me behind. We were covered really nicely. Really proud of the 12 group.”
• With three races remaining in the regular season, there have been 13 different winners and they would all qualify for the playoffs with the remaining three spots going to the top three winless drivers in the standings.
At this point, those spots are held by Tyler Reddick, Alex Bowman and Chris Buescher.
William Byron leads the race for the regular-season championship by 18 markers over his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott.
• Bubba Wallace followed up last weekend’s victory at Indianapolis with a sixth-place finish Sunday at Iowa. Despite having to take two free passes, Wallace rallied to earn his 10th top-10 finish of the season in the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota.
“I was just relaxed the whole time, really. It was interesting to see how things shake out. We had an up and down day as you mentioned,” Wallace said. “I was ready to just debrief the whole car mid-race and figure out what we need to do to just wholesale it. We had our issues and just fought really hard to get our Alltroo Camry back in the top 10.
“I felt really good firing off and I was really hesitant on how that was going to last and here with are P6 after all of that. After the middle part of the race if you would have told me we would finish sixth I would have told you alright.”
• Austin Dillon finished 10th in his Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. It was his fourth top-10 effort of the season.
“Top 10 for our Get Bioethanol Chevrolet. That feels like a win with the way things have been going,” Dillon said. “We had a really fast car today. Cautions did not go our way. I feel like we have a top-five car for sure if things had played out a bit differently. It was a blast out there and felt good to race up front with those guys and be in contention.”
• After winning consecutive races on road courses at Chicago and Sonoma Raceway, Shane van Gisbergen has recorded finishes of 30th, 19th and 31st the past three weeks.
He’ll be a threat to win again this weekend as the series visits the road course at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l.
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