Chip Bowers, the President of RFK Racing, made a media appearance to explain why the team is splitting with Brad Keselowski following the 2026 season.

The team made the announcement that it was splitting with Keselowski at the end of September, but did not provide an explanation as to why. It simply stated, “Roush Fenway Keselowski (RFK) Racing and Brad Keselowski today announced that Keselowski will conclude his tenure as driver of the No. 6 Ford Dark Horse Mustang following the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, bringing to a close an important chapter for both Keselowski and the organization.”

Additionally, the team noted that it would work with Keselowski to seemingly buy him out of his ownership stake in the company, “RFK Racing and Keselowski intend to collaboratively and mutually work through the appropriate next steps regarding his existing ownership interest in the organization, and the team supports his desire to explore his career opportunities elsewhere.”

In a media appearance ahead of the NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas, Bowers explained why RFK Racing is splitting with Keselowski. “For Brad is that he really has an interest in being a race car driver for the foreseeable future. I think a 5-year+ plan is what he’s got his eyes on. And I applaud that. We are excited about Brad, considering all the things that he’s considering and things he wants to achieve on the track. I think that’s tremendous. We’re going to be rooting for him the entire way.”

“I think for us as an organization, as we looked at it, if you look back as we started our journey together five years ago, we had an idea of Brad taking on a very ambitious role. He’s going to be race car driver, he’s going to be Head of Competition, he’s going to be minority owner. He’s a businessman and has interest outside of our organization. He’s a father. That is an incredible amount of things to balance. And we have a lot of empathy for just how hard all of that is to achieve and achieve at a high level,” he continued.

“So when we looked at it, we wanted to make sure organizationally that not only we set ourselves up for near-term success, but really long-term sustainable success. And so when we started looking at what the next three years look like for us an beyond, it was clear that we wanted Brad to start focusing more on his role in competition. We felt like, as you all know, you look at Chris Gabehart or Chad Knauss, and the list goes on and on and on. These are 24/7 jobs. You have to live, breathe it constantly. And if we want to be in the same conversation as Hendrick Motorsports and Penske Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing, it’s going to take that level of commitment. And that’s what we’re focused on as a company. That’s what we’re focused on across the entire organization.”

“So for us, we wanted that to be a natural transition over the next two to three years for Brad. I think he wants to continue to drive for much longer than that, and that’s fine. We applaud that. Like I said, we want to give Brad, because we have so much immense respect and appreciation for Brad, every opportunity to do all the things he wants to do in his career,” he added. “But that’s what makes it so hard. This is a business and we just weren’t aligned with that and that happens sometimes. We just wanted to make the competition side more of a focus. He wanted to focus more on the driving side. We get that and that’s why it took us so long to get here. Is that we worked so hard and diligently to find a solution and just couldn’t get there. And that happens sometimes in business.”

Bowers also made clear that the split was not contentious or that there is any bad blood.

“You hear a lot of things that there was arguments between Brad and Fenway Sports Group, could not be further from the truth,” he said. “There is no adversarial relationship. We are all still friends. It’s hard. That’s difficult emotionally. It’s been a tough week from that stand point because we never thought we’d find ourselves here. But I think everybody did what they felt was in their best interest and that’s okay. We understand.”

Furthermore he went on to elaborate on why they could not come to a deal given Keselowski is an owner of the team, “The reality is when you have a relationship that was intertwined as Brad’s was with our organization: driver, Head of Competition, investor. A lot of that was wrapped into one agreement and so when you start looking about what his future might hold on the track as a driver and we’re trying to figure out how to best allocate his time, we could’ve gone and tried to find a new Head of Competition. That’s challenging, as you might imagine, for someone to still drive for us, who helped build that piece of the business, who now is going to be focused on other things. We wanted to set the next person up for success.”

“And if he is to go drive for another organization that is not a Ford Racing Team, you might imagine there’s a lot of concerns around that. So there’s a concern about Sharing intellectual property and all the things,” Bowers continued. “You simply just can’t have that dynamic. So, one key decision unfortunately creates a domino effect for all the other ones. And that’s what ultimately led to where we are.”

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