• Brad Keselowski had a dominant car for much of Sunday's NASCAR Cup Race at Atlanta.

• The shove Joey Logano received from Corey LaJoie on the final lap resulted in Keselowski having to settle for second.

• Next up is COTA, and Keselowski likes his chances of keeping things rolling in the right direction.

Brad Keselowski led twice for 47 laps Sunday at the Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway and appeared on the brink of claiming his first victory as a co-owner of RFK Racing.

However, the shove Joey Logano received from Corey LaJoie on the final lap resulted in Keselowski having to settle for second. Still, it’s the best finish he’s recorded since leaving Team Penske at the end of 2021.

It was his first top-five finish of 2023 after getting just one top-five in all of 2022.

“It’s night and day from where we were a year ago, 100%,” Keselowski said. “The coolest thing about this is two veterans showed that you can run a race here side-by-side bump drafting and not wreck the field. It can happen if you race respectfully.”

Next up is COTA, and Keselowski likes his chances of keeping things rolling in the right direction.

Keselowski particularly likes the package NASCAR introduced at Phoenix Raceway and will use again at Circuit of the Americas because it makes the cars more difficult to drive. The package reduces downforce by 30%.

“When I first came in the Cup Series these were some of the hardest cars I ever drove in my life. In fact, they were the hardest cars I’d ever driven in my life,” Keselowski said. “You would come off the corners and they would wiggle and they would wobble and you would really be out of control and you’d spin the tires and then drive back down into the next corner and you’d about back it into the fence.”

That changed as the car’s horsepower decreased and the downforce increased. Keselowski said the specifications NASCAR allowed in the car made them easier to drive.

“I feel like over the last two or three years specifically, the cars on the short tracks had just turned into cars that were too easy to race, too easy to drive and not becoming of what we would expect a Cup Series driver to have to endure,” Keselowski said.

Keselowski described the new package as a step in the right direction for the Cup cars, making them “difficult and challenging to drive.” He said if he put a local short-track veteran in it, that person would probably struggle to drive it.

“He would probably spin out on corner exit,” he continued. “He would probably have a handful of problems with it.

“The cars that we had with the downforce package before that, I feel like I could take any local short-track driver in the country, put them in there and they’d probably get in a good car and run pretty well. That’s not what we want at this level.” That’s not what I think is indicative of what our fans and our sport has as an interest for what drivers should be at this level. You should not be able to go from a local short track or the Truck Series and get in a Cup car and be immediately successful. It should challenge you in new and more difficult ways.”