Brad Keselowski has shared a brutal assessment of road courses. He claims road courses are the ‘hardest races’ to attract sponsors and fans.

NASCAR just got over with its maiden road course race of the season at Circuit of the Americas. Keselowski finished a middling 20th in the Duramax Texas Grand Prix. The former Cup Series champion has a rather poor record in such tracks. He last secured a top-10 road-course result in the 2022 Sonoma race.

Meanwhile, COTA drew its largest NASCAR crowd this year, selling tickets to fans from 47 states and 10 countries. Keselowski, however, argues otherwise.

“I just put on my business owner hat and I don’t understand why the sport wants to run so many road courses as a business owner. It’s the hardest races to sell sponsors for it has the lowest attendance, the lowest ratings like that doesn’t make sense to me. We should be going places where the sponsors would be there, the fans would be there and TV gets the best ratings and road courses are historically the worst in all of those categories,” Brad Keselowski said via X/SpeedFreaks.

NASCAR viewership has been on a steady decline in the past ten years. The series averaged less than 2.5 million viewers last season, a far cry from over 4 million viewers in 2016.

Many attribute the decline to the waning popularity of the playoffs. Now that NASCAR has reverted to the Chase format, the sanctioning body hopes to bring back its core fans.

Brad Keselowski refused to sit out COTA race amid injury status

Brad Keselowski has been recovering from a serious leg fracture of his right femur. He sustained the injury during the off season, and has undergone rigorous physical therapy to get fit for races.

The 42-year-old initially sat out the Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium to better prepare for the Daytona 500. The wait was worth it, as he earned a top-5 finish in the season opener.

However, the demands of COTA posed a serious challenge. Ahead of the race, he spoke with NASCAR reporter Jeff Gluck and addressed the risks.

“I mean, I’ve trained and worked for this my whole life. And, you know, short of just not being able to drive, like, I feel like I can drive. I know it’s gonna hurt, but I can do it, so let’s go….that’s the risk of being a racecar driver at all times,” he concluded.

Brad Keselowski had appointed Joey Hand as his backup driver in case he couldn’t make it. Nonetheless, the Michigan native was deemed fit to run the race and came away unscathed.

The No.6 driver currently ranks 12th in the standings, dropping three spots after the COTA race.