Brad Keselowski Atlanta Motor Speedway Recap

Keselowski appeared to have won the pole position during qualifying Saturday morning.  However, NASCAR officials later determined that he had not started his lap before time expired in the third and final round – shuffling him back to 10^th place on the starting grid.

Once the race started, Keselowski quickly began climbing up the leaderboard.  He was running second on lap 18 at the time of the second caution period.  When the pit lane opened on lap 19, Brad and Crew Chief Chad Kendrick chose not to pit – unlike nearly everyone else on the lead lap.  Keselowski restarted in the lead when the race went green on lap 22 and kept the top spot until lap 25.  Despite his older tires, he remained inside the top 10 until he made his scheduled pit stop under green on lap 40.  Unfortunately he was penalized by NASCAR for driving through more than three pit boxes and given a pass thru penalty – also under green – on lap 43.  The costly sequence dropped him two laps down and outside the top 20 in the running order.

The lost distance was too much to overcome especially since the 130 lap, 200 mile race had just one more caution.  That yellow, on lap 51, gave Keselowski the opportunity to make up a lap when he didn’t pit under yellow and took the wave around back to the tail end of the field.  A well timed yellow to allow Keselowski to make up his other lap never came.  And so, despite their sour luck, he and team fought back through the field to post a 15^th place finish.  

BKR PR