Sunday’s Window World 450 at North Wilkesboro was an old-school short track kind of night.
With 450 laps of racing in the grueling heat of the North Carolina Summer, and very few natural cautions, the NASCAR Cup Series contested an event that felt compatible with the Wilkesboro of old, which last hosted a points-paying event three decades ago, in 1996.
That type of night also fit perfectly into the wheelhouse of RFK Racing teammates Brad Keselowski and Ryan Preece, who collected top-10 results, in an attempt to bolster their chances at qualifying for ‘The Chase’ for the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series title.
2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion Brad Keselowski came home seventh in the No. 6 Consumer Cellular Ford Mustang Dark Horse, while Preece, driving the No. 60 Simple Tire Ford Mustang Dark Horse, finished 10th.
With qualifying canceled due to inclement weather, the starting lineup for Sunday’s Window World 450 was set by NASCAR’s Performance Metric, which left Preece and Keselowski both starting outside the top 20, in 21st and 23rd, respectively.
The turning point of everybody’s race on Sunday happened before the halfway point, on Lap 184, when Alex Bowman and Tyler Reddick crashed on the backstretch in the middle of green-flag pit stops, bringing out a caution and scrambling the field completely.
Keselowski and Preece were among the lucky drivers who hadn’t made their stops yet and would remain on the lead lap. However, others, including RFK Racing teammate Chris Buescher (who spent time inside the top-10 early in the race) weren’t so lucky and got trapped multiple laps down, and were never able to fully recover.
That set the tone for both the No. 6 and No. 60 to earn top 10s, with Keselowski collecting points at the end of the race’s second stage and even leading seven laps towards the end of the race in a green-flag pit cycle.
“It was a good day for us with the Consumer Cellular Ford Mustang. We got a top 10, seventh here, some stage points. We just executed really well,” said Brad Keselowski. “The car was not the fastest, but we didn’t beat ourselves. We had good strategy by Jeremy Bullins and solid stops. We’re missing our jack man, Dustin Lineback. We’re thinking about him, but the guys stepped up and did a good job.”
“It was a long night,” said Ryan Preece. “We had a caution go our way, so that was nice. I’m just proud of Derrick [Finley]’s calls and we had a good day.”
It’s been an unbelievably difficult Summer for both Keselowski and Preece.
Keselowski had a six-race stretch from Watkins Glen to San Diego where the driver of the No. 6 Ford Mustang finished 30th or worse five times, including three straight DNFs at Nashville, Michigan, and Pocono. In that same timeframe, Preece also had a devastating stretch, where from Charlotte to Chicagoland, the No. 60 finished outside the top-25 five times in seven races and had a three-race DNF streak at Charlotte, Nashville, and Michigan.
That stretch of races absolutely DESTROYED any buffer that Keselowski or Preece had on the cutline to make ‘The Chase’ this season, and while there’s still an opportunity to make up ground with some good finishes, the pathway got both easier and much more difficult at the same time, post-Wilkesboro.
Even though both Preece and Keselowski snagged top-10s, their deficit to the cutline grew significantly. That’s because, Joey Logano, who was also fighting for one of the final spots in “The Chase” went to Victory Lane in Sunday’s Window World 450, thus eliminating any potential points gain that the RFK Racing teammates would have gotten.
However, Keselowski still believes there’s a glimmer of hope to make ‘The Chase’.
“We’re going to have to earn it,” Keselowski said post-race. “We had a really difficult two-month stretch, where we dropped from in the top-10 in points to 19th, and we need to rebound from that. Days like today give us hope that we can do that.”
With just five races remaining in the NASCAR Cup Series regular season – Indianapolis, Iowa, Richmond, New Hampshire, and Daytona – Preece and Keselowski sit 18th and 19th in points, with a 48-point and 59=point deficit to the cutline, respectively.
Can they make the rally? Four of the last five regular-season events are either at short tracks or superspeedways, places where Ford Racing has thrived in 2026.
“The short tracks and superspeedways are the best chances for the Fords and we need to capitalize on that for sure. That doesn’t mean we’re going to throw away the other races; we still have to make the most of those too.”
Photo: NKP for Ford Racing
