Brad Keselowski took Jack Roush to victory lane for the first time since 2017 as their rebranded team showed its ready for the Daytona 500.
Keselowski and Chris Buescher won the 150-mile qualifying races at Daytona International Speedway on Thursday night to put them side-by-side starting from the second row in NASCAR’s sold-out, season-opening spectacular.
He won the race on the 60th and final lap of the second qualifying race for the Daytona 500 when leader Joey Logano wrecked trying to block Buescher’s run. Logano, who was visibly angry after wrecking his Team Penske Ford, said he misjudged Buescher’s closing rate.
Keselowski celebrated a huge first night of Daytona racing as both the team owner and its driver. He left Penske in November for an ownership stake of Roush’s organization — now called RFK Racing for Roush Fenway Keselowski — and is now driver of Roush’s flagship and original No. 6 Ford.
Keselowski and Buescher will start Sunday behind NASCAR champion Kyle Larson and his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Alex Bowman. The Chevrolet drivers locked down the front row in Wednesday night time trials.
Six teams came to Daytona battling for four “open” spots in Sunday’s 40-car field. Two spots were filled in time trials — former Formula One champion Jacques Villeneuve will make his Daytona 500 debut, as will Noah Gragson for Beard Motorsports — and one spot was available in each of the two qualifying races.
Grala earned one of them with a pass for 18th on the final lap of the first race. NY Racing, a team owned by Black entrepreneur John Cohen, raced its way into the Daytona 500 in the second race. The team pulled Greg Biffle out of semi-retirement and at 52, Biffle will be the oldest driver in the field Sunday when he makes his 15th career Daytona 500 start.
The 500 has been sold out for about a month with an expected crowd Sunday of more than 120,000.
Larson led a race-high 34 laps from the pole, but finished seventh. He will lead the field to green Sunday in the debut of NASCAR’s new Next Gen car.
The racing Thursday night was extremely conservative until Logano’s last-lap block — because of the slow rollout of the Next Gen, the car missed its initial deadline by a year because of the pandemic — teams simply don’t have enough race cars.
