Brad Keselowski’s pursuit of the home track win that has eluded him his entire career didn’t go as planned in the rain-delayed FireKeepers Casino 400 on Monday evening.
BK started from P8 and ran in the Top 10 for the entirety of the first stage of the race when it finally got underway on Monday, more than 24 hours after it was scheduled to be run on Sunday. Stage 2 saw Brad improve his position after some adjustments from the 2 Crew and he was up to P4 when he pitted with seven laps to go in the stage hoping to get his strategy to compete for the win, come the end of the evening.
But that stop went awry when a tire changer slipped and the over the wall man charged with pulling the tire in lost control of it and had to reach over the wall to keep his balance. The No. 2 team was assessed a pass-through penalty for a safety violation that put the Deuce a lap down to the leaders.
Brad and the team spent the rest of the evening fighting back, and after getting their lap back on Lap 131. Back on the lead lap in P29, BK carved his way through the field. He was back in contention by the time a final round of green flag pit stops began and crew chief Paul Wolfe made the call to keep the 2 on the track to lead laps (he led six) before making their final pit stop for fuel only. BK cycled through to P7 and finished in the sixth position after a two-lap NASCAR Overtime sprint to the finish.
“We just didn’t put it all together today. We were in a really good spot and then had the pit road penalty and lost the lap. It took us until about 70 to go to get it back. It’s kind of a miracle that we got back up to sixth to be quite honest. With a yellow we might have had a shot at winning it. I thought the team did a good job with the strategy all day.”
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