After breaking his leg on a skiing trip in mid-December, 2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion Brad Keselowski is back in the garage at Daytona International Speedway, ready to try and chase the DAYTONA 500 victory that has eluded him for his entire career.
Keselowski was cleared to compete in the season-opener on Monday, after completing a Medical Evaluation Test on Monday, which consisted of running 50 laps around Charlotte Motor Speedway, plus additional tests to ensure that the 41-year-old could climb from his car in the event of an accident.
Wednesday morning’s 50-minute practice session marked the first time the Rochester Hills, Michigan-native had been in a racecar since the accident, and all things considered, the RFK Racing owner-driver says that things went well.
“Good,” Keselowski said about the practice session. “When I’m in the car, I know I’ve got an injury, don’t get me wrong, but I feel the best in the car. The seat is molded to me really well, and you get a little adrenaline flowing, so I felt pretty good.”
Keselowski does currently plan to run the entirety of Sunday’s 500-mile contest, but should he need a driver to step into the No. 6 Castrol Ford Mustang Dark Horse, then former RFK Racing driver, David Ragan will get behind the wheel. Ragan ran the DAYTONA 500 in 2024 as part of the team’s #PROJECT60 program.
“We’ll have the Duel [on] Thursday. I felt good enough today to easily do the Duel,” Keselowski said. “The Duel is 60 laps, which is roughly just over a quarter of the race, probably 27-28 percent of the race. It’ll be a great indicator of what I’ll have for Sunday. Thankfully, the way this race week works, you get these little bites and doses, and each one of them is a little more intense, and we can get a good feel for it.”
Keselowski ultimately ended up getting his approval but admitted that for the first little while after the injury happened, there were other, more substantial concerns than whether or not he would ever be driving a racecar again.
“I’m eight weeks in, and I’ll tell you, until about three to five weeks in, there was a question of if I was going to walk again, let alone driving a racecar,” Keselowski admitted. “Those were the thoughts that were going through my mind. I was confident I was going to put in the work, and I was going to own whatever result there was.”
“There were certainly a lot of moments where you’re like, ‘Oooh, this isn’t a layup.’ About that week four, week five, I made some pretty big steps and progress quite literally, but again, I didn’t know until I got in the car what it was going to be. Until you get in a racecar going 190mph, you don’t know. You don’t know how it’s going to feel.”
The first two events of the season, the DAYTONA 500 and the Spring event at EchoPark Speedway, are pretty straightforward, being superspeedways, but the third race of the year takes place at Circuit of The Americas, and Keselowski admits that might be the trouble spot.
“COTA is a big concern for me,” Keselowski added. “I’ve got two-and-a-half weeks to COTA. If I had to run the full race today, I’m not 100 percent sure I could do it, but I’ll have another two weeks of reps and rehab to continue to gain, and hopefully I can get there.”
In the event that Keselowski can’t complete the entire NASCAR Cup Series event at COTA, Joey Hand is on standby to drive the No. 6 Ford Mustang Dark Horse. Hand, like Ragan, was part of RFK Racing’s #PROJECT60 program in 2024 and scored a top-five at the Chicago Street Course.
This isn’t the first time that Keselowski has come back to the NASCAR Cup Series after an injury, though, as in 2011, the Michigan-born driver broke his ankle during a test session at Road Atlanta. Driving for Team Penske at the time, Keselowski came back and immediately rallied to score four consecutive top-five results.
“This is way more serious,” Keselowski said, comparing this injury to his injury in 2011. “When I broke my ankle, that sucked. Don’t get me wrong, it was very painful. But in a couple of weeks, I was fairly mobile. This is a much more significant injury, unfortunately. It’s hard to explain to people who have never broken their femur before what it’s like. It’s not the same as breaking your leg below the knee. Your femur is the biggest bone in your body. It’s got a lot of things running through it , and it has to heal. You can’t really cast it. You can’t do any of those things, so you just kind of have to tough it out. A normal broken leg is eight to 12 weeks to heal. This is more like six months, so it’s just totally different.”
Keselowski will take to the racetrack, along with RFK Racing teammates Chris Buescher, Ryan Preece, and Corey LaJoie, for single-vehicle qualifying from Daytona International Speedway on Wednesday, February 11 at 8:15 PM ET on FOX Sports 1.
