NASCAR has enjoyed a long 75-year history, and during this time the sport’s rules have changed a lot. A lot of it has had to do with safety, and other times, it is to help the sport move with the times. Currently, NASCAR has got its 7th generation of Cup cars, and Brad Keselowski has driven three of those generations. Over the years, the various Original Equipment Manufacturers began gaining power. Then they began employing some practices that seemed to favor some teams over the other.

Quite honestly, it is unheard of for a racing team to shut shop after winning a championship. F1’s Brawn GP does not really count, since they were bought over by Mercedes, and the rest was history. However, Brad Keselowski cited the example of Furniture Row Racing.

“Right around 2020-2021, the sport went through what I consider a dramatic behind-the-scenes pivot,” Keselowski told Matt Weaver. “To where outlay engineering was taken from the teams, based on rules and procedures, and given to the OEMs. That created a tremendous dynamic shift in the sport that prevents someone like a Furniture Row from coming back into the sport and having a chance to be successful, in my mind. I think those rules were targeted exactly at Furniture Row, in the fact that they came in, were successful, spent a lot of money, and they went away. The dialogue at that time was, that’s not good. There were comments that Furniture Row bought a championship. Although I didn’t feel that way.”

They won the 2017 Cup Series championship with Martin Truex Jr, which was hugely unexpected. However they organisation shut shop in 2018, for a variety of reasons. Those reasons were related to rising sponsorship costs, team alliance costs, and personal reasons. As it turned out, team owner Barney Visser suffered a heart attack, and this happened mere weeks before the season ended.

With that, Keselowski also said that he did feel that the team spent a lot of money, which was their downfall. Owing to that, the rules were quickly changed in order to prevent a similar situation from happening again. Though Keselowski did warn that the consequence was that the OEMs then created a sort of tier system for their teams. Top teams usually got the lion’s share of the funds, and the other teams were left scrambling. This was clearly evident from the last 6-7 seasons.

However, Keselowski did tip his hat to Toyota for bucking the trend. In his words, the Japanese giants saw that was not the way to go, for the sport or for them as an OEM. With the likes of Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI Racing working so closely, it bridged the gap. Since Ford and Chevrolet have not adopted such a tactic, Toyota is reaping the reward with their on-track results.

As a team owner, Keselowski is hoping that Ford gets in on the act and his team, RFK Racing, benefits from it. Otherwise, the likes of Hendrick Motorsports and Team Penske will continue ruling the roost.