News

Keselowski Claims Toyota Advantage, Again

September 15, 2017
Jerry Jordan
Share Kickin' the Tires

By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer

As Toyota teams topped the opening practice session of the weekend at Chicagoland Speedway, Brad Keselwoski chimed in on Twitter and claimed that the Toyota organizations have an advantage over the field.

This is not the first time that Keselowski has called out the apparent advantage Toyota’s have over the rest of the field. At Michigan International Speedway, Keselowski claimed that the Toyota’s were “sandbagging” since recent history showed that NASCAR takes cars from each manufacturer back to a wind tunnel to help minimize the advantage.

However, the following Monday, NASCAR’s senior vice president and chief racing development officer, Steve O’Donnell, admitted that the sanctioning body put out the rumor about taking cars back to the wind tunnel after Michigan. However, the rumor was in fact false as the wind tunnel the sanctioning body uses was in renovations.

In the only practice session on Friday, Toyota’s held the top four positions on the speed chart with Kyle Busch at 184.143 mph. In the opening practice Keselowski posted the 10th fastest speed at 181.574 mph.

Here is what went down on Twitter:

 

After qualifying was completed, Busch and Keselowski continued their banter. 

Keselowski is upset that the sanctioning body has not stepped in like years past to help level the playing field. Keselowski that Ford Performance was at the top of the cycle at the beginning of the season.

“At the start of the year we were at the top of the cycle. And at this moment we are not where we need to be. With respect to that, we were at the top and it seemed like there were a lot of rules changes us to slow us down and now you have cars that are so much faster than the field and the complete inaction by anybody,” said Keselowski. “That is frustrating because parity is either good or it is bad. I don’t care either way. But when you are at the top you like being at the top, everybody likes being at the top.”

Despite being the most vocal about the issue, Keselowski does not try to speak for other drivers, but believes there are some drivers supporting his comments from behind the scenes.

From Busch’s standpoint, he only sees Keselowski as the only driver complaining. 

“We work on what we work on and we weren’t complaining when they were fast and they won the championship knowing what they were doing we had to go to work and figure it out,” said Busch. “It just seems like those things aren’t happening. All in all, I just have to give thanks to our guys. They do the work and they do a great job, they build fast race cars and it’s fun to drive fast race cars.”

“If you ask Brad he can fix the world’s problems, that’s all there is to it. It’s just a fact of the matter that no one else is doing anything, they’re putting their head down and going to work and he thinks that somehow the big brother is going to come up and help him. I don’t know what the point is, we all just work hard and do our jobs, we’ve gotten to where we are and we’re going to keep doing that. I wouldn’t think that all the speed we’ve got for the rest of the year is just here this weekend or the past six weekends, I would like to think it’s here for the next 10.”

Busch would like to see this rivalry come into fruition on the race track instead of Twitter. Bush alluded to possible payback during his post-qualifying press conference.

“I’m way behind in payback, just fyi, he’s way ahead so if anybody is going to be getting it, it’s going to be him.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *