Roush-Fenway Racing went through a major restructuring when Brad Keselowski became co-owner for the 2022 season. Least of all was changing its name to Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing.
Keselowski ushered in wholesale changes to the struggling organization from the bottom up. After both cars failed to make the Playoffs in his first year – the first time Keselowski didn’t participate in the postseason since 2013.
This season, the results have been much better. Both cars were in comfortable position to earn a Playoff berth on points heading into Richmond, but Chris Buescher’s win put an exclamation mark on the team’s improvements.
And it was made even better by a strong run for teammate Brad Keselowski, who led laps of his own when the team cars ran one-two on the racetrack, ultimately finishing sixth after an error on pit road.
That win is especially huge for the team’s efforts to secure sponsors.
Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing is the team drawing the seventh-most funding from sponsors at $36.66 million per year, according to a GlobalData report viewed by CupScene editor Greg Engle. That includes a high-profile new deal with Build Submarines.
The win helps keep those sponsors interested, Buescher said.
“We had a large showing of Fastenal guests here, our partners with Navistar here, a massive group from buildsubmarines.com for the weekend,” he noted.
“That is huge for us to be able to have a showing like this with everybody here, to just show that we can talk about the progression and we can sit down and tell everybody about what we’ve done better, what we’ve invested in, what our tools look like now, how our cars look better now, built nicer. All that is true.”
“But it has to show up on the racetrack on Sunday,” he pointed out. “That’s what days like today do. That proves we’re not trying to fluff everything, that we’re legitimate into what we’ve invested into this program and what everybody is working on to make sure that we are competitive, that we are not okay with running top-ten.”
Keselowski agrees. He said that he’s especially proud of his team’s efforts to secure strong partnerships, and says he’ll continue to work on that.
“We are doing a great job with our partners right now,” Keselowski said. “We signed some key partnerships here in the last few weeks, with Build Sub. Seeing us in Victory Lane with one of our cars, just super proud to be where we’re at.”
“Obviously the sponsorship game is so critical for us. 60 to 70% of our team revenue comes from partnerships. We need those partnerships to be world class partners,” he explained.
In order to attract those strong partnerships, the team has had to buckle down and renew its focus.
“At RFK we talked about winning races, making the Playoffs, and being able to be a contender in the Playoffs,” Buescher said. “We don’t want to be a placeholder by any means either.”
For Brad, that’s meant being an active ‘servant leader’ at the team.
“Really my job is to be a facilitator,” he said. “It’s to try to make sure the resources are there in combination with the right people to be successful.”
“I take the most pleasure from seeing that a group of people come together, whether it be the ones that you see with the drivers and the pit crew and the team members or the people you don’t see, which is the mechanics, management team, so forth, the partners. I take just as much pride in that as anything that I’ve done.”
For Buescher, it’s been huge, showing real results for the once-struggling team. He said it’s staggering just how far they’ve come.
“Now, last season was a building season. It took a lot of work to get there. To see results from all that work is big for us.”
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