RFK Racing President: 'We Wanted Brad [Keselowski] to Focus More on Competition Role'

LAS VEGAS -- A difference of ideas between team executives and their driver-owner led to Jack Roush and Fenway Sports Group splitting from Brad Keselowski, according to RFK Racing President Chip Bowers.

Bowers became the first executive on the Roush-Fenway side of the matter to address the forthcoming split that has yet to fully shake out. He spoke Saturday in the Las Vegas Motor Speedway media center about Keselowski stepping away from his roles as head of competition for the team and driver of the No. 6 car. 

Bowers said negotiations took place over "months" with a rift over his role within the team in his new contract at the center of talks. Roush-Fenway wanted Keselowski to focus more on his role in competition, akin to Joe Gibbs Racing's Chris Gabehart and Hendrick Motorsports' Chad Knaus, to get RFK closer to those organizations.

The organization wanted Keselowski to transition into that over the next "two to three years" but Keselowski wanted to continue racing.

Roush-Fenway respected that and made a hard decision, Bowers said.

"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 and 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 so diligently to find a solution and just couldn’t get there," Bowers said. "That happens sometimes in business. That doesn’t mean that it was acrimonious because it wasn’t."

Bowers added it's been a tough week for the organization at a point no one there ever thought they'd be at. They were surprised they couldn't figure out an agreement, even for Roush-Fenway to retain Keselowski as a driver while stepping back from competition duties.

"I think we’re both surprised that we just couldn’t figure it out. The reality is that when you have a relationship that was as intertwined as Brad’s was with our organization – driver, head of competition, investor – a lot of that was wrapped into one agreement, 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 best to allocate his time, we could have 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," Bowers said.

Bowers said Roush-Fenway had some concerns on the competition side about Keselowski.

"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 are a lot of concerns around that. So, there is a concern about sharing intellectual property and all the things, you simply just can’t have that dynamic. One key decision, unfortunately, creates a domino effect for all the other ones and that’s what ultimately led us to where we are.”

Now set to split from Keselowski, he is free to do what he wants to do without a non-compete stipulation hanging over him. That means the organization has an ally turned competitor.

The organization is confident. All of their sponsorship is tied to the organization itself, including Kroger. In contrast to previous reports, the major backer of the organization doesn't have a problem with sponsoring a car that isn't chartered -- giving them full leeway to continue as a three-car team even with two charters.

"No one wants to be a middle of the pack franchise. Not one. And we can’t do that running two cars. We know that we need three cars to achieve that. We’ve worked extremely hard in large part thanks to Brad’s leadership to run three cars," Bowers said. "The list is endless and now that we’ve done a really good job of building that foundation, we would be doing ourselves and our fans an incredible disservice to take a step back and go back to a two-car team."

Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece are locked in for 2027. Preece will run a chartered entry, Bowers confirmed as he walked off stage Saturday. Buescher is likely to have the other chartered entry.

The search is on for a competition director, a driver and a third charter -- with just two months left in the year and four months to Daytona.

Reading between the lines, the Roush-Fenway charter search is methodical but frantic.

“There’s not a day that goes by that we’re not thinking about it, planning on it. I don’t talk about it publicly because I don’t know that it helps our process very much. We’re trying to be very strategic around what an acquisition of a third charter means. Certainly, it would be just transactional and I get that, but if there are strategic alliances that can be created, if there’s a way that we find better ways to work with people through the addition of a charter, that we should be thinking about that," Bowers said.

Bowers said his group confirmed they will pay for a charter. They just need to find one for sale that is the right situation for them. 

Even if 2027 isn't right for a third charter, Bowers said, in as many fitting words for Las Vegas, they're all in.

“We have the financial commitment of our ownership group to withstand any revenue loss by not having a third charter. I think a lot of times people are like, ‘Well, if you don’t have the third charter, you’re gonna make less money.’ That is correct, but back to my point about supportive ownership, they understand that sometimes things don’t happen as timely as we would like it," Bowers said.