Why Brad Keselowski can still make the Chase

With three races left in the NASCAR Cup Series regular season, Brad Keselowski is 19th in the standings and 49 points out of a Chase berth. 

A disastrous summer stretch for the 2012 champion has seen his Chase hopes get slimmer and slimmer with each passing week. 

But there's good reason to not count the future Hall of Famer out when it comes to his postseason hopes: The last three races of the regular season come at three of Keselowski's best tracks. 

Richmond, Loudon, Daytona line up well for Brad Keselowski

Keselowski has four top 10s in the last five Richmond races and hasn't finished worse than 17th at the Virginia short track since the spring of 2013. He led 102 laps at Richmond in 2023 en route to a sixth-place finish. He's won twice at the 0.75-mile track. 

Keselowski is also a two-time winner at New Hampshire, though he's finished 28th and 23rd in the last two races at "The Magic Mile." Still, he finished seventh and fifth at New Hampshire in 2022 and 2023 and has 16 top 10s in 25 starts at the venue. 

It may not show in his average finish, but Daytona has also been an excellent track for the Rochester Hills, Mich., native. Keselowski only has one win (July 2016) at Daytona but finished fifth in the Daytona 500 on Feb. 15 and always seems to find his way to the front at superspeedway races. 

Keselowski has led 123 laps at Daytona in the Next-Gen era and has four top 10s in the last nine races at the Florida superspeedway. 

There's a steep hill to climb for the No. 6 team to make the Chase, but it's not at all impossible, even if it might require a vintage performance or two from the 42-year-old driver.