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Brad Keselowski ending operations of Truck Series team after 2017
2017 will be the final season for Brad Keselowski’s Truck Series team.
Keselowski announced Thursday that he’ll be shuttering the operations of his Truck team “for many reasons.” He currently fields trucks for Chase Briscoe and Austin Cindric.
“The team has also provided me with meaningful experience as a team owner,” Keselowski said in his statement. “I’ve never made it a secret that I would eventually like to be an owner at the top level of the sport. And, while this is many years down the line, I want to start to prepare for that possibility now. Part of that preparation is seeking to develop an advanced engineering and manufacturing company that would be housed out of our 78,000 square foot facility in Statesville and ultimately help to support this vision.”
At the end of 2014, Keselowski said that he lost $1 million on his Truck Series team that season. With the financial picture in NASCAR not exactly improving over the past two-plus seasons, it’s hard to envision that loss quickly turning to a profit. And Keselowski made it clear in a blog post explaining the decision that his team was still losing cash.
Like I said, this was a really hard decision to make. I’ve anguished over it for probably the last four or five months. In the end, there just were a lot of factors that, taken together, made it difficult for me to continue to operate a team in the truck series.
My contract with Team Penske and the process related to it were definitely a consideration. It is tougher to get deals done now, and it’s only going to get harder. I’m no longer a driver who’s just starting out, and as I get older, it’s more difficult to justify losing money, especially as I look toward the future.
And it’s noteworthy to us from a financial perspective that Keselowski is taking the steps to become an owner in NASCAR’s top series without continuing to own an active team. Keselowski recently signed a contract extension with Team Penske to continue his role as the driver of the No. 2 car in the Cup Series.
As far as the BKR facility goes, it’s going to play a key role in a new business endeavor I’m planning to undertake. I’m not ready to announce what we’re doing, but I’m a big believer in manufacturing, especially advanced manufacturing. We’re looking at developing a new technology that will be relevant to motorsports, and to the broader marketplace, too. Stay tuned.
If I’m able to do what I want successfully, it will give me a pathway back to being an owner. One of the things I’ve learned from Roger Penske is the importance of having a successful core business outside of motorsports. If you have a successful business venture outside of motorsports, you can kind of roll with the ebbs and flows of the sport as an owner. That’s the position I want to be in, and that I’ll need to be in to be an owner who lasts in NASCAR.
The shutdown of BKR means two of the Truck Series’ more prominent teams are no more at the end of the season. Red Horse Racing ceased operations in May. The longtime team fielded two trucks and won a championship with Timothy Peters.
Losing two teams — and four trucks — from a series that’s already hurting is yet another massive sign the financial structure is horribly wrong in the Camping World Truck Series. It has to be feasible for teams to be both competitive and to simply exist. And without big changes to the series it’s hard to see things getting better in both the short and long term.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
