NASCAR: Brad Keselowski takes a shot at Toyota teams and drivers

Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski took a shot at NASCAR’s Toyota teams and their drivers at Michigan. Do his comments hold any water?

While Toyota drivers have only won six races so far in the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series season compared to the eight races each won by both Chevrolet and Ford drivers, they have definitely had a speed advantage as of late, as evidenced by the fact that they have dominated each of the past five races and won four of them.

Also supporting the idea that Toyota has an advantage is the fact that Toyota drivers Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch are currently in 1st and 2nd place, respectively, in the championship standings, with Denny Hamlin in 5th place giving Toyota three drivers in the top 5 and Matt Kenseth in 9th place giving them four in the top 9.

Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski, who took the pole position for the Pure Michigan 400 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan on Sunday in his #2 Ford, breaking a five-race streak of Toyota drivers taking poles, offered his thoughts on why Toyota has been so dominant as of late but failed to have any of its cars qualify in the top 3 at Michigan. Here is what he had to say about the topic.

"“About this time every year NASCAR takes all the cars to kind of check to make sure that the competitive balance is where they want it to be, and I think we’ve seen the last two or three weeks that the Toyota cars are pretty dominant.”More from NASCARNASCAR Cup Series: New team set to compete in 2024NASCAR: Will Kevin Harvick’s major record ever be broken?NASCAR: Surprising name continuously linked to new seatNASCAR driver at risk of missing the Daytona 500?NASCAR set for rare appearance last seen 13 years ago“We had a strong suspicion that those guys would kind of tune it down this weekend, so not to post a pretty big number in inspection that maybe balanced back out the competition, and potentially that’s right because our team hasn’t done much differently and those guys are just not as fast as they’ve been the last few weeks.”“So we’ll know for certain at the end of the week based on whether NASCAR takes the cars after the race today.”"

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Toyota drivers reacted to the report of Keselowski’s logical suspicions about Toyota sandbagging on Twitter.

Here was the Tweet of ESPN’s Bob Pockrass, to whom these drivers were replying.

Here was points leader Martin Truex Jr.’s response.

And here was the response of Denny Hamlin, who has been arguably the hottest driver in the Cup Series as of late with six top 4 finishes in the last eight races.

Keselowski and Toyota clashing is nothing new, as after he criticized Kyle Busch’s behavior following the Coca-Cola 600, a Toyota executive told him to “keep your mouth shut.”

Next: Brad Keselowski takes pole at Michigan

Do you think Brad Keselowski’s comments were fair, or do you think they fit the description of “fake news”, as Denny Hamlin stated? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to follow Beyond the Flag on both Instagram and Twitter. Also, don’t forget to follow along with Beyond the Flag for the latest news, opinions and analysis stemming from a number of different motorsports series. You don’t want to miss any of it.