Brad Keselowski might have more than just race plans for his next outing on the track against Austin Dillon, as the latter “intentionally” ended the #6’s race at Nashville. At least, that is what his spotter, TJ Majors, suggested on the team radio seconds after the wreck. And while Dillon might have put it all behind him, Keselowski is focused on the incident a bit too much.

“It’s pretty clear he wrecked me intentionally after seeing that replay, so turnabout’s fair play,” Keselowski said on Prime Video, seemingly sending out a warning to Dillon after glancing at the wreck’s replay once he was out of the car.

Now, a lot seemed to be happening on the track when the wreck took place, but Dillon’s contact did seem a bit odd, because before the Lap 193 incident that sent Keselowski into the wall, there was already something simmering on Dillon’s side.

On Lap 145, Austin Dillon went for a wild spin down the frontstretch, going off the bumper of Chris Buescher as the cars stacked up after slowing for Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who had made a move for pit road. Dillon then had to check up for Keselowski and got turned from behind by Buescher, but kept the car off the wall. Dillon voiced his frustration at Keselowski after that incident.

Then came Lap 193. Noah Gragson bobbled across the track after contact from Ricky Stenhouse Jr., the field scattered, Austin Dillon tagged the bumper of Brad Keselowski, and Keselowski spun across the track into the wall, further collecting Team Penske’s Austin Cindric in the process.

“The 3 wrecked you on purpose, he’s mad at you from earlier,” Majors told Keselowski over the radio.

But Dillon, for his part, insisted on his own radio that “it wasn’t our fault,” while also appearing genuinely confused, and asking his team, “Why did everybody check right there? I was already on the brake pedal.”

But Keselowski won’t let it go, considering what he lost. Entering Nashville, he had reached 14 points above the Chase cutline after a balancing 15th-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600. It was meaningful for a team that has spent most of this season building rather than winning. He finished Stage 2 in the top 10 at Nashville itself, collected stage points, and had the car adjustments he’d been searching for.

“We had a car that was capable of running up front at times tonight, and the team did a good job making adjustments throughout the race,” Keselowski said in his post-race team statement. “We were able to gain some track position with strategy and put ourselves in position to fight for stage points in the second stage, which was encouraging.”

And so, losing that to a wreck, whether intentional or not, is bound to sting and linger differently when you’re racing against a cutline.

Moreover, the two drivers have a paper trail that goes back to the 2021 race at Michigan International Speedway, where Keselowski made contact with Dillon’s right rear during a side-draft, sending the #3 hard into the outer wall and ending his day.

Then, in New Hampshire in 2022, Dillon showed up out of nowhere under caution and slammed into Keselowski, and after a second, a harder retaliatory hit from Keselowski. Dillon made it clear he wasn’t interested in resolving it privately.

“I don’t talk to him,” Dillon said then.

Why Keselowski called Dillon’s recent move intentional makes more sense now. However, there is also the possibility that the move wasn’t deliberate at all, or at least that is what Dale Earnhardt Jr. suggested.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. downplayed Brad Keselowski and TJ Majors’ claim against Dillon

Quite a few things were happening around the start/finish line as the 193 lap kicked off, and it perhaps can be a bit difficult to come to an exact conclusion in terms of all the incidents that kept happening on the track, but Dale Jr. attempted to sum everything up live during the broadcast, trying to take the blame away from the #3 driver.

“The #4 (Gragson) gets shoved up the race track by the #47 (Stenhouse Jr) there, big chain of events there,” he said on the Amazon Prime Video commentary. “So, I think the #6 (Keselowski) lifted to get in behind the #10 (Ty Dillon), and the #3 runs over him accidentally. Just all these cars getting stacked up. Brad gets out of the gas because of the contact with the #10. Brad’s like, ‘alright, let’s all get through this,’ and the #3 runs over him.”

As mentioned previously, Brad Keselowski had initially moved down to the apron to avoid making contact with Ty Dillon’s #10, and Austin Dillon had followed him down. Now, as it seemed from the onboard cam, the #3 made hard contact at the back of the #6, but is there a possibility that perhaps it was, indeed, because of a chain reaction?

That could be a little hard to claim, especially considering all the cars that were in the proximity of the incident. Even Austin Cindric was involved as Keselowski spun around and hit the wall. While there seems to be some uncertainty around the entire incident, there is no doubt that Brad Keselowski did have the chance to deliver one of his strongest performances at Nashville, which he lost because of the crash.