One of the biggest news to come out of the NASCAR Cup Series this week has been Hendrick Motorsports' run-in with the governing body, and fellow competitor and team owner Brad Keselowski shares a unique take on the same.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based racing outfit was on the receiving end of L2-level penalties from the governing body after fitting modified hood louvers to their cars.
The louvers in question are supplier-sourced parts that teams receive from NASCAR. These parts are in no way to be modified or altered by the teams, something which the parts from the four Hendrick cars and #31 car from Kaulig Racing did not comply with as per NASCAR.
Both teams claim the louvers in question were ill-fitting and were not modified in any way.
According to Brad Keselowski, owner-operator at Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, the governing body has a system put in place for whenever teams run into parts that are ill-fitting. Certain aspects of such parts can be altered by the teams to aid the installation process, as Keselowski elaborated:
"There's always a part somewhere that's not what you want it to be and there's a portal that NASCAR has to submit those parts to and there's usually some dialogue and communication around that. I feel like NASCAR has been amendable to work through those and has gotten significantly better over the last year. We have parts here and there that are issues and NASCAR has come up and said, 'Hey, you can do this or you can't do it.' It's more less about the communication with them."
Brad Keselowski believes RFK Racing's L2-level penalty 'changed culture' within the team
Co-owner of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, Brad Keselowski is a Cup Series driver who is quite familiar with the L2-level penalties levied on several teams this past week.
Having been on the receiving end of the same penalty last season, Keselowski looked at the incident in a different light in 2023. He elaborated:
"It was good for the industry. From our perspective, it changed our culture inside of the company to where we had better behaviors. I thought it set a tone for the industry."
Watch Brad Keselowski take to the Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday (March 19) for the Ambetter Health 400.