Poll anyone and they’d say that Brad Keselowski is still one of the superspeedway kings in NASCAR today. While he has arguably the most talent in the field, he has also grown frustrated with how the new racing on these tracks have become which has left him sending messages.

In the 2018 Coke Zero Sugar 400, Keselowski was running up front but was collected in a big crash early on in the race when he tried to avoid a blocking William Byron. That sparked a melee in Turn 3.

In final practice last July at Daytona, the two came together again, this time it was Keselowski backing up his words at Daytona after his crash a year ago.

With about 15 minutes to go in final practice that day, Keselowski got into the left rear quarter panel of Byron’s No. 24 Chevrolet in Turn 3 which sent Byron’s car out of control. Luckily, Byron was able to keep control of his car enough to not come back up the banking and take several other drivers out. But, it was a move that look intentional on Keselowski’s behalf.

Why make a move like he did in practice? Well, go back a year prior, remember?

Byron was leading last year’s race but switching lanes from top to bottom. He moved low to block Keselowski, an incident that ended with the No. 2 Ford spinning high and smashing the wall.

“I need to wreck more people so they’ll stop throwing bad blocks,” Keselowski said that night.

On the Fourth of July incident, Keselowski blamed Byron for putting him in that exact same position again, this time, Keselowski didn’t back down.

“Just had a big run,” Keselowski told NBCSN when he brought his car back to the garage. “He put me in a position where I had to lift, and I keep telling these guys I’m not lifting. Just trying to send a message. I’m not lifting.

“I’m tired of getting wrecked at these (superspeedway) tracks,” he added. “They’re all watching. They know. I’ve been put in positions these last few plate races – not just by William (Byron) but a handful of other people too where I’ve had to make a decision to risk myself on being loaded up on the trailer and watching the end of the race or drive through the guy in front of me. I’ve been too conservative and ended up watching too many of these plate races from the back of the trailer and that is not the responsible thing to do for my team. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’ve made that commitment. If you’re going to make that commitment, then you make that commitment today and make that commitment in the race as well.”

Will those words come back this weekend? He says that he hopes people take the right chances and not the wrong ones.

“You hope everybody is smart and that they take chances, you have to take chances to learn,” Keselowski said on Friday. “But by the same token you hope they don’t take chances that are potentially lethal to everyone else’s day and causes big wrecks, but I can’t speak for everyone.

“Everybody has a different approach. It’s one of the great things about life is that we’re all different and on the racetrack it plays out. Everybody has different motivations, challenges, goals and they all kind of get thrown into this big pot at Talladega with no practice. We’ll see what happens.”

Keselowski’s last five superspeedway finishes are 12th, 13th, 39th, 25th and 36th respectively. He finished 32nd, 33rd, 36th and 27th in the four races in 2018. Furthermore, 9 of his last 14 superspeedway starts have seen him finish 30th or worse.

So, why the up and down moments at these tracks?

“It changes almost every two or three years to where, quite honestly, your techniques and tactics have to completely evolve,” Keselowski continued. “If you go back, you look at the plate races even three years ago, it’s completely different. I think you go back and look at the plate races from 20 years ago and, my goodness, those guys wouldn’t even know what they were looking at. I watch some of those races just because I think they’re really cool and fun, and I can’t even comprehend what’s going on because the racing was so much different, and the moves that worked or didn’t work were completely different.

“You have to keep evolving at Talladega. I don’t know if there’s a track on the circuit where the tactics evolve more rapidly and drastically year over year than Talladega, so you’ve just got to really try to stay on top of that and it’s a hard thing to do. Sometimes you can stay on top of the tactics and it doesn’t matter and you end up getting wrecked anyway, but it certainly is a challenging, challenging place.”

Keselowski, heads to Talladega this weekend with some momentum. He’s won twice already since the COVID-19 pandemic ended.

Can he find his groove on the superspeedway’s again? Talladega is a good place. He’s won five races on the 2.66-mile Alabama oval and looking for a sixth. He has scored a top 10 finish in six straight races now too on the season.

Plus, Penske has won five of the last six Fall races on this race track and two of the last four in the spring.

Will that change though with a new package and not having any practice beforehand?

“I think the list of changes was so big that I’m having a hard time anticipating how the cars are gonna drive,” Keselowski said. “Small variations in how the car drives can make a big difference as to how they draft, so it’s gonna be a lot of learning as we go in the race with having the stages and all that I’m sure everyone will adjust quite rapidly, but with respect to that I’m not sure what to expect enough to give it a real articulate answer. But I do know one thing, we don’t have to run over each other and wreck each other.”