After Tyler Reddick and Chris Buescher collided while racing for the win with 10 laps to go, Brad Keselowski drove past both and into the sunset to win the Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, ending a 110-race winless streak and earning his first win as the driver and co-owner of RFK Racing. Keselowski's win is the 36th of his Cup career and first since Talladega in April 2021.
The deciding moment of the race came entering Turn 3 with 10 laps to go, when Tyler Reddick attempted to put a slidejob on Chris Buescher for the race lead. But the move failed, putting Buescher in the wall and cutting tires down on both Buescher's No. 17 and Reddick's No. 45. Keselowski first drove past Reddick and then past Buescher with nine to go as he had to peel to pit road with a flat tire.
Keselowski was then able to drive away over the final laps, holding back a momentary advance from Ty Gibbs to put himself, team co-owner Jack Roush and the No. 6 RFK Racing Ford back in Victory Lane. This marks the first win for the company's flagship No. 6 since David Ragan at Daytona in July 2011, and it's also the first time it's won Darlington since NASCAR Hall of Famer Mark Martin took the checkered flag in the 1993 Southern 500.
Goodyear 400 unofficial results
- #6 - Brad Keselowski
- #54 - Ty Gibbs
- #4 - Josh Berry (R)
- #11 - Denny Hamlin
- #14 - Chase Briscoe
- #24 - William Byron
- #23 - Bubba Wallace
- #48 - Alex Bowman
- #51 - Justin Haley
- #34 - Michael McDowell
"It's one heck of a day. It's Darlington, so whether it's your first win or your last win, this is a really special track," Keselowski told Fox Sports. "It's the history of NASCAR, it's as tough as it gets. That battle at the end with my teammate, Tyler Reddick and I, we just all laid it out on the line. It was freaking awesome. I thought it couldn't get much better than Kansas -- it did today."
Keselowski's car excelled all day on long runs, and he was able to run down Reddick's dominant car -- which had been at its best on short runs -- to take the lead before a crash by Kyle Larson brought out the caution with 41 laps to go. Keselowski's pit crew performed a sub-nine second stop on the final trip to pit road, but so too did Reddick's crew, giving their driver the lead back thanks to the No. 1 pit stall Reddick earned by virtue of winning the pole.
With Reddick's performance on short runs stressing the need for Keselowski to keep him from getting away, the initial drama in the race for the win came with 30 laps to go when Keselowski, trying to hang to Reddick's inside, ended up running Reddick into the wall coming off Turn 4. The contact broke the two leaders' momentum, allowing Buescher to take the two of them three-wide and take the lead before Reddick was eventually able to shake off the No. 6 and pursue Buescher before the deciding moment with 10 to go.
"It wasn't good, but I knew that I'd have another shot at it. My car was really good on the long runs," Keselowski said. "And when Tyler got underneath Chris, I knew I had another shot at it. When they made contact and I couldn't get by them, I'm like ,'Oh,' and they must've gotten a flat tire. I don't know what happened.
"We caught a break. We've caught enough bad breaks over the last year or two, it's nice to catch a good one."
After being disappointed last weekend at Kansas following a loss in the closest finish in NASCAR Cup Series history, Buescher was incensed this time. As his teammate and boss celebrated the win on the frontstretch, the Prosper, Texas driver angrily got out of his car to confront Reddick on pit road, briefly putting hands on the driver of the No. 45 before settling for a less than pleasant conversation where Reddick tried to apologize.
"We got wrecked. That one's clear as day. We don't need any cameras to tell us," Buescher told Fox Sports. "I don't know what to say. We've raced each other really clean through the years, tried to be really respectful about it, and we get used up. And something that you just know is not gonna work. I'm just really pissed off about it right now.
"... We got used up. He knows he messed up, he said it. But it doesn't change anything for us. I told him he's got a win sticker on the door, we're still trying to find ours. And we get used up like that, take away those opportunities, it's tough. That's two weeks in a row we've had a shot to win races.
"One I'm gonna live in my head forever on what I would've done different, and this one here I need someone else to be more mature about it."
Reddick led a career-high 174 laps and had by far the class of the field, but he wound up in the inverse situation to the one he capitalized on a few weeks ago at Talladega. Unlike when Reddick surged past Keselowski after he collided racing for the win with Michael McDowell coming to the checkered flag, it was now Reddick who found himself on the wrong end of his shot at the victory going awry.
"I completely understand where [Buescher's] coming from," Reddick told Fox Sports. "He's running the top, running his own race, running his own line keeping me at bay. I made a really aggressive move and was hoping I was gonna clear him, and when I realized I wasn't going to I tried to check up and not slide up into him. I wish I wouldn't have done that, unfortunately.
"I completely understand why he's that mad. He did nothing wrong. Just trying to win the race; if I take myself out, that's one thing. I can live with that. I'm just disappointed it played out the way it did and took him out of the race as well. That was not the goal there.
"If I was gonna go for it, I was hoping I was gonna clear him. If I hit the wall, pop a tire, I take myself out, I can live with that. It's tough to walk away knowing I used someone up and took their chance away from winning the race that's raced me really cleanly since I came into the Cup Series. Just have to work on that and, I don't know, try and make some better decisions going forward."
As Keselowski drove to Victory Lane in his Castrol Super GT throwback from the 1990s, Buescher and Reddick were relegated to finishes of 30th and 32nd, respectively.
Two tough tempers
Buescher was not the only Cup star left seething at the end of the race, as defending Cup champion Ryan Blaney was also incensed after an incident that ended his day early. On a Lap 129 restart, William Byron took Blaney and Martin Truex Jr. three-wide for the fourth spot, making contact with Truex that sent Truex up into Blaney and Blaney hard into the Turn 2 wall.
The damage to Blaney's car proved too much to repair, and Blaney -- making one final lap before taking his car to the garage for the day -- drove up onto the track to take a swipe at Byron's and express his displeasure under caution.
"He shoved it three-wide under us and just got tight off of 2, and I got tagged and ended up getting wrecked," Blaney told Fox Sports. "... He used up a little more racetrack than I thought, so I kind of have every right to be mad. And he gets away scot-free."
After his television interview, Blaney went further in expressing his frustration with Byron to print reporters to the point where he let his future intentions slip when explaining what he was doing driving up to the door of Byron under caution. "I'm not gonna hit him -- I'll save that for another time," he said.
Byron, who went on to finish sixth, told Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports he was surprised he had even gotten to the bottom of three-wide, but felt initially that he had held his line and not come up the racetrack at what's a particularly narrow point of the track on the exit of Turn 2.
"I hate that that happened. ... I probably could've given a little more room," Byron said. "It gets really, really tight right there."
Blaney wound up 38th, one of three drivers who failed to finish. Zane Smith and Kyle Larson also ended their days with DNFs, both due to crashes.
Race results rundown
- Ty Gibbs set another new high mark for his young Cup career, as his second-place run marks a new career-best finish. It's the second time this season Gibbs has set a new career-best finish, and his four top fives on the season are now as many as he scored in all of his 2023 Rookie of the Year-winning season.
- Josh Berry once again excelled on a physical racetrack tough on tires, earning not just his first top 10 but also his first top five of the 2024 season by driving his No. 4 Ford to a third-place finish. It's Berry's first top five since he finished second at Richmond last year subbing for an injured Chase Elliott, and it also came in a special throwback to the late model crew chief Rodney Childers once drove at Tri-County Motor Speedway in 1998.
- Sunday will go down as one of the best days in the history of Rick Ware Racing, as Justin Haley drove his No. 51 Ford up into the top 15 on pure pace and wound up with a ninth place finish. Not only did Haley earn the first top 10 ever for a Rick Ware-owned car on a non-superspeedway, but teammate Kaz Grala also had good pace and finished the day with an 18th-place finish to put both RWR cars in the top 20.
- A few days after announcing he would leave Front Row Motorsports at the end of the 2024 to go to Spire Motorsports, Michael McDowell finished 10th to earn his second top-10 finish in a row. Teammate Todd Gilliland arguably had the faster of the two Front Row cars, but his pit crew had an off day and continually lost positions during stops under caution, limiting him to a 15th-place finish.
- Erik Jones made his return to the driver's seat of the Legacy Motor Club No. 43, settling back in after missing two races due to a back injury suffered at Talladega. Jones avoided trouble throughout the day and finished 19th, earning his seventh top-20 finish of the season.
- A cut tire and crash may have ended Kyle Larson's race some 41 laps shy of the finish, but he and his team were at least able to take one trophy home: Larson was named Best In Class for his throwback to Terry Labonte's Kellogg's Corn Flakes paint scheme from the 1990s, one that came complete with Labonte's own firesuit and a reunion of members of Labonte's No. 5 team that won the Winston Cup championship in 1996. Larson led 15 laps and won Stage 1.
Next race
One year after the resurrection of legendary North Wilkesboro Speedway, the NASCAR Cup Series heads back to North Carolina's foothills and the moonshine country where the sport began for the million dollar NASCAR All-Star Race next Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on FS1.
