LONG POND, Pa. – It wasn’t long ago when RFK Racing had all three of its Cup Series entries inside The Chase bubble. Now, all three teams are looking to turn their fortune around.
With 11 races remaining in the regular season, the steadfast Chris Buescher leads the team, ranking eighth in the championship standings. Meanwhile, co-owner Brad Keselowski has plummeted six positions in the last three races, and enters Pocono Raceway with consecutive DNFs for the first time since he had a three-race stretch just over a calendar year ago. Ryan Preece has bled points since being docked 25 markers for a skirmish with Ty Gibbs at Texas Motor Speedway. The No. 60 team has dropped to 19th, 19 points behind Austin Cindric, who currently holds the coveted 16th position.
“We’ve spotted a lot of points to a lot of different teams right now and we have to get that back on the up and up,” Buescher said on Saturday at Pocono. “Coming to the race track being fast, figuring out how to put wins on the board, that will fix all of those things real quick.”
For much of the opening few months of the 2026 season, the RFK trio hovered anywhere between fifth and 15th position. Buescher and Keselowski have a pair of top five finishes each, with Preece scoring a best effort of eighth at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Speed hasn’t been the issue, however. Sure, the three drivers have combined to lead 254 circuits — fifth-most among all organizations — but they have experienced misfortune galore in recent weeks. While running inside the top 10, both Buescher and Preece were swept into a melee during the final stage of the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, resulting in 30th- and 33rd-place finishes, respectively.
All three RFK cars failed to finish at Nashville Superspeedway due to incidents. It marked the first time since Richmond Raceway in September 2007 that the team had three DNFs in the same race at a non-drafting event. Preece had part of a brake rotor go through his radiator. Keselowski got a nudge from Austin Dillon during the final stage, crashing into the outside wall on the frontstretch. Buescher brought out the race’s final caution have a brake rotor of his own explode.
Last weekend at Michigan International Speedway, Buescher led the brigade with a ninth-place outing despite significant cosmetic damage. Preece was scored 28th when involved in a nine-car pileup on the frontstretch. Keselowski clobbered the outside wall with a flat tire in Stage 2.
Yet there’s no real cause for concern, internally.
“It’s very largely based on being involved in stuff that isn’t our doing; some of it is,” Buescher added. “Some of it is a little miss here or there, but nothing major. It’s not like we’re showing up to the race track with no speed and just struggling all day long. These things just keep sneaking up on us. We’re not finishing out the races as good as we should and not showing the true potential of our race cars for our entire organization.
“We’ve talked about it my entire career, pride ourselves on being able to maximize our days. If we have a race car capable of running 10th, we’re going to what we can to run eighth with it and not crash trying to be a hero and go to P3 and some outside chance. We’re not even doing that. That’s not been our problem, it’s just getting caught up in stuff.”
Keselowski remains optimistic, knowing how putrid of a start the No. 6 team had in 2025 compared to 2026. Through the opening 15 events last year, the No. 6 team had an average finish was 24.3 compared to 17.3 this year, an increase of a full seven positions.
“We’re better this year than we were last year, so you try to find the positives,” the 2012 Cup champion noted. “Certainly a tough stretch of weeks for all three of our teams. Last week is last week for better or worse – and in this case for worse. We have got to race the week that is in front of us. One week at a time.”
In a season where Ford, collectively, has lacked speed compared to Toyota and Chevrolet at higher-speed venues, RFK has had the best intermediate speed of the bunch. There is still room to improve to get over the hump and potentially breaking through to Victory Lane for the first time in a points-paying event since 2024.
“We have some work to do and we’re aware of that, but we’re certainly in the ballpark,” Buescher stated. “We have good handling race cars at RFK and we’re working steadily to figure out how to get these Mustangs into Victory Lane. We’re not quite at that last step yet.”
The No. 17 car was the quickest in the field on five-lap practice averages in Saturday’s practice session at Pocono. Keselowski will have to start from the rear in Sunday’s The Great American Getaway 400, experiencing an engine issue during his qualifying effort. Preece thought he had a potential mechanical issue as well, good enough for 35th in qualifying.