Last week it was announced that Austin Cindric would take over the helm of Team Penske’s iconic No. 2 Ford Mustang in NASCAR’s Cup Series. The team simultaneously announced that current No. 2 driver, Brad Keselowski, the 2012 Cup Series champion, would be leaving the team at the close of this season.
Keselowski’s plans were announced on July 20th, just a week after Team Penske’s announcement. The Rochester Hills, Michigan-born racer is joining Roush Fenway Racing as a full-time driver and minority owner of the organization, starting in 2022. Keselowski will helm the No. 6 Ford Mustang for Roush Fenway and will take an increasing stake in the company, joining Roush Industries, Jack Roush and the Fenway Group. “This agreement,” said Steve Newmark, president of Roush Fenway Racing, “is a little bit different than the normal arrangements we’ve entered into in the past.
“The transaction has three pieces: the first is that Brad will be behind the wheel of the No. 6 car starting in 2022 and will pilot that vehicle for years to come,” Newmark explained. As the second partition, “He will be purchasing a minority ownership stake in the company and that triumvirate will lead us from a strategic perspective for years to come. Brad will also be assuming a leadership mantle at our organization. Even while he’s driving, he will be on the competition committee, and then, once his driving career runs its course, he will shift over into an even greater role leading our competition side.
“This is our next step in the evolution of our team and we’re extremely confident this will allow us to excel for years to come.” Newmark noted the culmination of this agreement wasn’t a quick decision and has been brewing over the past few months. “Brad and I have been friends over the years in the garage and we’ve regularly gotten together a couple times a year, just to talk about the state of the sport, talk about the direction, whether it’s the charter system, stage racing and, particularly in my prior role with the team owner council, I relied quite a bit on Brad for input from the driver side.”
Keselowski, notably one of the more cerebral members of the NASCAR Cup Series community, is intending to bring home a title this year, his final one with Roger Penske’s team, before assuming both his driving and managerial career with Roush Fenway Racing. “It’s an incredible opportunity and I think, digging deeper into that, there’s probably a lot of people wondering what I saw here that made it great. The ability to have a long-term driving contract was something I valued,” he said. “I want to stay at one place and be there for a long time, and hopefully for the rest of my career.
“I know that’s the intent and goal, and that position was offered to me. The second condition – which was really important to me – was to be in a leadership role. We’re forming a competition committee that I’m proud to be a part of leading, so that will come together and I think will allow me the freedom to express myself creatively and to lead the company and team to be the best it can be. That was really critical to me, to be able to have more control over my overall destiny with respect to matters competition-related. The third thing was, of course, the ownership position. It’s quite a unique opportunity that really excites me. It was important to me long-term; it represents growth for me personally and professionally, which is very important, and it creates a deeper tie-in to really the fourth point, which is to have a role in this sport when I’m done driving,” Keselowski confirmed.
Keselowski cited Tony Stewart’s decision to form Stewart-Haas Racing and take an ownership stake in that team as his model for this change. “I think he was probably in a similar position when he joined” Gene Haas’ operation. “In fact, I was looking through the stats and he (Stewart) had the same amount of wins (35) and was the same age (37) when he moved over to Haas’ team. That was probably more by coincidence than choice, but that clearly shows you can be successful with this type of arrangement. There’s certainly quite a precedent there.”
The driver does believe, with the new NextGen car and engine program on tap, “There should be a significant reset with the technology, a significant reset for the way the processes flow and some of those things that we would need to overcome, so I think kind of taking that down the course of NASCAR leadership and some of the things they have going on, a lot of confidence in where the sport is heading… I think we’re on a big upswing and I kind of feel like I’m buying into a stock as it’s about to go up, with looking at the landscape.” He also expressed supreme confidence in the front office at Roush Fenway, in particular their ability to bring blue-chip partners into the organization.
Jack Roush, whose lifetime dedication to the sport of racing can’t be denied noted, “Brad has distinguished himself by taking on more things than he needed, to be successful as a driver and participate in NASCAR. His truck team,” Roush said, “was a big challenge, but he wanted to do that, apparently in order to get his legs under a team operation, and I can’t say more about how impressed I am with his space age manufacturing of aerospace components.
“For him to be willing to think about how he wants to spend his money and enjoy his time off after he stops driving, to have him think about what he could do by participating at the next level in the management of a team, and to enjoy bringing along young people to realize their dreams and to start their careers and to have things develop so that they can have security for their families and all – he’s willing to be a participant and to make his mark in that, as well. Those interests and those motivations fall in line with what I’d hoped for all my drivers, and I think it marks a path for other drivers and other owners, to think about their legacy plans as the years advance. You can’t do anything about the advancement of years, you’ve just got to plan to make the most of it,” Roush noted.
Financial terms of the triumvirate’s agreement were not disclosed, but Newmark did state that Keselowski was buying a minority percentage of the team, “and the hope and expectation is that may grow over the years as well.”
Good for Brad, too bad its a Ford.