Brad Keselowski gets Nationwide win at Charlotte

Oct 10, 2014; Concord, NC, USA; Nationwide Series driver Brad Keselowski (22) celebrates in victory lane after winning after the Drive For The Cure 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Mandatory Credit: Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports

Brad Keselowski kicked off the Charlotte Motor Speedway NASCAR race weekend with a win Friday night in the Drive for the Cure 300 Nationwide Series race. As Keselowski drove toward the checkered flag, Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth waged a battle for second. Busch came out on top in that battle, with Kenseth taking third.

“That was probably the best car I’ve had all year,” Kenseth said. “It was fun to be competitive. I wish we could have got the win, here, but it was a fun race.”

Keselowski got mired back in the field after pitting under greend earlier than originally planned because of a tire issue that resulted in him scraping the wall a few laps before most of his fellow competitors began cycling through green-flag stops around lap 60.

“It was gonna be fun,” Keselowski said. “I told Jeremy (Bullins, crew chief) over the radio that I thought we were playing prevent defense early in the race. Everybody was waiting to see who was gonna blow the next tire. You didn’t want to run slow and get further back in traffic before you could make passes, but you could just see that everybody that ran hard kept having tire problems and we had some on the first run.”

The yellow flag waved before several drivers, including JR Motorsports teammates Chase Elliott and Regan Smith, made their stops. Elliott and Smith were able to make their stops later during that cycle, as they pitted while almost everyone else stayed out during a previous caution that came out on lap 16. The earlier stop was planned for Elliott’s team, while Smith was forced to pit because of tire and suspensioin issues.

After a lap 114 caution, Busch and Keselowski got to the top two spots on the restart and ran at or near the front for the remainder of the race.

Elliott did get back to the front after taking two tires during a lap 138 caution, but Busch and Keselowski got back up to the top-two spots soon after the restart. Then pit strategy during the next caution, the seventh of eight in the race, on lap 167, put Brendan Gaughan and Blaney on the front row for the restart.

“They (Keselowski’s team) were faster than us tonight,” Busch said. “Just knew that with about 60 (laps) to go that we had a tire advantage over them and that was going to be the way for us to win the race. But bizarre debris cautions always ruin those things for you. It’s a shame.”

Blaney took the lead from Gaughan on the restart that followed. He continued to run up front for a few laps, while Gaughan dropped back several positions. After an additional restart with 19 laps to go, Keselowski took the lead and Busch moved back up to second.

Blaney finished fourth, and Kyle Larson rounded out the top-five. Finishing sixth through 10th were Chris Buescher, Trevor Bayne, Elliott Sadler and Brian Scott.

“It was a great night for us,” Blaney said. “This just being a one-off deal team with Greg Erwin (crew chief) and getting a bunch of guys together at the race shop to come to the race track, it’s pretty neat to see the hard work they put in pay off.”

In addition to tire issues, there was also heavy attrition in Friday night’s race. Two of the eight cautions were for multi-car wrecks. With 10 cars from mid-pack back stacking up at the start of the race. Then, there was a seven-car wreck on lap 74.

With his ninth-place finish, Elliott grew his championship points lead over Smith from 38 to 42 points. Smith finished the race just outside the top-10 in the 11th spot.

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