While they didn’t end up in victory lane, it was quite the day for RFK Racing in Sunday’s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway. The three-car organization looked like a powerhouse as it placed all three of its entries inside the top 10 of the finishing order, and leading the charge for the team was Chris Buescher, who brought home a runner-up finish.
RESULTS: FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan
Buescher led 13 laps on the day and snatched the race lead from William Byron in the closing laps of the race’s opening Stage as he went on to score his first Stage Win of the 2025 campaign. The No. 17 Ford Mustang Dark Horse was one of the fastest cars in the field, without question, throughout the 400-mile event around the 2-mile speedway in Brooklyn, MI. However, Buescher would get hosed on several restarts.
This would mire him in the field, and the driver would be playing catch-up for the majority of the event.
Buescher, who won this event in 2023, was proud of his team for bringing a car capable of contending for the race win, but he was disappointed in himself, personally, for his decision-making in lane choice heading into restarts throughout the day.
“This team brought such a fast Kroger / Heinz Ford Mustang, and I’m so proud of them for that. And I didn’t get it done,” Buescher, who finished 1.099 seconds behind race-winner Denny Hamlin, said. “We had a better car today, I don’t have any doubt about that, but that’s on me. Didn’t get it there.”
Buescher continued, “Yeah, I’d just love to try to choose different lanes at different times, right? That was the chaos today,” Buescher explained. “We lost a lot of track position, and to get back in there, it’s just chaos. Gotta be decisive and make a decision, and a lot of the decisions I made weren’t the right ones.”
While it was disappointing not to walk out of the Irish Hills with RFK Racing’s 15th NASCAR Cup Series trophy from Michigan International Speedway (the team leads all organizations with 14 wins all-time at the track), Buescher was happy they finally had a solid finish to go with the speed they brought to the track this weekend.
“Again, this race car was so good today. Really proud of everybody, and appreciate it. After the speed we’ve had the last several weeks and not getting some of the finishes, this was a really strong day for us,” Buescher said.
With the runner-up effort, Buescher further bolstered his Playoff aspirations as he gained two spots in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings to 12th. Heading into this weekend’s road race in Mexico City, Buescher is 20 points above the Playoff cutline.
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But it wasn’t just a good day for Buescher; all three of RFK Racing’s Fords ended the race with a solid result as Ryan Preece came home in ninth, and Brad Keselowski picked up his second top-10 finish in his last three starts with a 10th-place effort.
Preece, like Buescher, finds himself inside the Playoff cutline with 11 races remaining in the regular season, but he has little margin for error as he is in the final slot in the Playoff Grid due to a tiebreaker over Kyle Busch.
While the slim advantage on the Playoff cutline is not a source of comfort for Preece, the driver and his No. 60 team made a series of strategic calls, which gained them valuable track position throughout the event.
Preece finished 27th in Stage 1 and struggled back in the extremely dirty air in the pack. However, crew chief Derrick Finley opted to keep Preece on track, while a large portion of the field pitted, which finally gave Preece a chance to see the front of the field. When he was up there, Preece showed he belonged as he finished Stage 2 in the sixth position, and was able to end the day with a ninth-place result.
Keselowski, like Preece, suffered from poor track position to start the race, but like Preece and the No. 60 team, Keselowski utilized strategic calls from crew chief Jeremy Bullins throughout the second and final Stage of the race to gain track position, which would allow him to be in a position for a solid finish.
Had it not been for a speeding penalty on pit road at Lap 110 and a less-than-ideal pit stall, Keselowski feels like he could have had a much better finish than 10th, but it wasn’t meant to be.
“We had a really good car. I felt like we had a top two or three car and just didn’t get to see it through. I’m really disappointed,” Keselowski explained. “We kind of crushed ourselves on pit road with the speeding penalty. Every time we pitted, we would lose a lot of spots. It wasn’t the pit crew’s fault—we just needed a better pit stall.”
Keselowski still questions whether he was actually speeding on his trip down pit road on Lap 110, but there’s nothing that will change the fact that he had a penalty after the race. Still, Keselowski was happy to walk away from his home track with his second top-10 finish of the season, and his 16th career top-10 result at Michigan.
“I’m not really sure about the speeding penalty. I felt I was way slow, so getting called fast didn’t really add up,” Keselowski stated. “But we had the speed to do a lot more than we did today, and I’m disappointed to not get that. Still, we’re reasonably happy with a top 10.”
While there was certainly some disappointment in the RFK Racing camp in the moments after the race as Buescher narrowly missed out on his first win of the season, and Keselowski felt like he had a much better car than his 10th finishing position indicated, it was a very positive afternoon for the three-car RFK Racing team.
And while the team has yet to win a race this season, they are showing more and more speed each and every week, and they seem like they are on the verge of a big breakthrough.
