Brad Keselowski Making 600th Cup Series Start at Martinsville

After recording a second-place finish during last weekend’s Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, his best finish since breaking his leg during the off-season on a family ski trip, Brad Keselowski is hitting another major milestone this weekend at Martinsville Speedway.

When the green flag is displayed for Sunday’s Cook Out 400 at the half-mile paperclip in Martinsville, Virginia, Keselowski will be making his 600th start in the NASCAR Cup Series, joining an elite club that only includes 34 other drivers.

Joey Logano, a three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and a long-time teammate of Keselowski’s at Team Penske, was the most recent driver to achieve this landmark start, becoming the youngest driver to do so last Summer at Dover Motor Speedway.

Keselowski made his NASCAR Cup Series debut on November 2, 2008, at Texas Motor Speedway, piloting the No. 25 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports. The Rochester Hills, Michigan-native would finish 19th.

Throughout his 599 NASCAR Cup Series starts to date, Keselowski has only driven for four different organizations; Team Penske (435 starts), RFK Racing (150 starts), Hendrick Motorsports (9 starts), and Phoenix Racing (5 starts), picking up wins for three of the four – the exception being Hendrick Motorsports.

32 of those starts have come at the historic Martinsville Speedway, where this weekend, Keselowski and his No. 6 BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse team from RFK Racing will look to collect the bossman a third grandfather clock, and in the process, make a little bit of history.

Of the 34 times that a driver has made their 600th start in the NASCAR Cup Series, only once before has said driver been successful in going to Victory Lane; Richard Petty, at Richmond Raceway in February 1973.

Keselowski is absolutely no stranger to success at Martinsville Speedway, having picked up a pair of NASCAR Cup Series victories at the racetrack in 2017 and 2019. The Michigan-native has led 1,068 laps around the racetrack, the second most of any racetrack in his career – behind only Richmond.

While the aerodynamic and horsepower package will be different heading into this weekend’s event, Keselowski has some recent success at Martinsville, leading 170 laps and finishing ninth at the racetrack in the Fall of 2024.

However, with that recent success, comes a lot of recent bad luck at the racetrack. In his eight starts at Martinsville with RFK Racing, Keselowski only has a single top-10 finish, and only three top 20s.

“Martinsville is the smallest track that we race on full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series for points. It’s known as the paperclip because, quite honestly, it looks just like a paperclip from above, but it drives like two drag strips in a Walmart parking lot. You’ve got these really long straightaways and then two very tight corners. You’re super heavy on the brakes and there’s a lot of room for contact because generally there’s one groove around the bottom. There’s no other track like it in the Cup Series and it’s got a set of challenges.”

The Cook Out 400 will take place on Sunday, March 29 at 3:30 PM ET on FOX Sports 1, Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90.