Despite missed opportunity, NASCAR insiders offer playoff hope for Brad Keselowski, Ryan Preece

Brad Keselowski and Ryan Preece had great runs in Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway. Keselowski finished third, while Preece followed with a fifth-place finish.

Both, however, remain below the playoff cutline with three regular season races remaining. But whereas Preece is just 23 points below, Keselowski is still well off the pace. Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic sees an avenue where at least one of them could sneak into the postseason, albeit by different outcomes.

“To me, Brad and Ryan are in two different categories,” Bianchi said on The Teardown podcast. “Ryan can still theoretically point his way into the playoffs. We don’t know what’s going to happen with upset winners, that kind of thing. But he’s still in a spot where he could still conceivably point his way in. While yeah, it would have been great to have that win — first career win, punch that playoff ticket — you still had a good points day and with three races left in the regular season, you’re still in the game, whereas Brad — as great as he’s run the last 10-12 races — you’re not going to make up that point difference. That is just not going to happen. It’s win or go home for him, and that’s why I think this hurts more for him than Ryan Preece.

“If you’re Brad, you’re looking at this like, ‘Man, what can we do. We won two stages today, got a bunch of points and that’s great. Who cares. Like, we’re still not going to make the playoffs unless we find a way to win one of these next three races.’ By the way, one of those last three races is on a road course, where Brad’s never won on before. So, conceivably, he’s only got Richmond and Daytona. He’s great at Daytona. You would think they could extrapolate what they learned at Iowa and apply it to Richmond, but you don’t know for sure.”

Brad Keselowski, Ryan Preece fast at Iowa

Both Keselowski and Preece were in contention throughout the race at Iowa, but it was the former who had arguably the best car in the field. Keselowski won Stages 1 and 2, picking up his first playoff points of the NASCAR Cup Series season. Unfortunately for Keselowski, there was no stages sweep. The caution-filled Stage 3 allowed drivers such as William Byron and Chase Briscoe to make it to the end of the race on fuel despite pitting well outside the window.

This was a great day for Brad Keselowski. He had arguably the fastest car in the field, leading 68 laps and accumulating a race-high 55 points. But at this point in the campaign, that doesn’t matter much for Keselowski. He needs to win to qualify for the postseason. Preece might be in that category as well, and Jeff Gluck likes their chances in the Aug. 16 race at Richmond Raceway.

“I do like their chances of figuring something out for Richmond because you had two great cars today with both Preece and Keselowski,” Gluck said. “… At one point, it sounded like the spotter talking to the crew chief on the second channel, not Preece, but someone came over the channel and said, ‘Hey, if we use this setup for Richmond, we just need to do this tweak and this tweak.’

“I don’t think it was Preece saying that, but they were already like, ‘OK, we have something to work with here.’ It wouldn’t take that much of a tweak — Ryan Preece is a great short track racer.”