Monday, March 7, 2016

Keselowski Is The Big Winner In Las Vegas

Keselowski Is The Big Winner In Las Vegas-nascar

Passing hometown favorite Kyle Busch with six laps remaining, Brad Keselowski won Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, the Kobalt 400, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.


Keselowski, who began his NASCAR career in 2004, is one of only four drivers who have won a championship in both the Sprint Cup Series (2012) and the Xfinity Series (2010). He also became the twenty-fifth driver to win a race in each of NASCAR's three national series in 2014 with a win in the Camping World Truck Series in Bristol. 




However, it had been a while since he visited Victory Lane. Below is Keselowski’s synopsis of his race: 


We're glad to be back in Victory Lane. It's hard to believe it's been 34 races. We've led a lot of races in that time span, probably deserved to win a few more races than that. That's just kind of how racing goes sometimes.

But, yes, of course thrilled to be back in Victory Lane. Thrilled to be locked into the Chase so early in the season, which is a tremendous feeling for our team, one that we're of course very thankful for.

Team Penske, 50th anniversary, this is the first win of the year. That feels really good.

For our team, I think we've seen such a major turnaround in a couple key areas, essentially the pit crew especially. My guys on pit road, there's nobody I would trade for right now. They're the hottest group on pit road, a large part of our success this week. They helped to keep us strong last week as well in Atlanta.

Then, of course, Paul (crew chief) and the team made some major adjustments and gains on the car in the one week we had between Atlanta, traveling back and forth.

All that stuff paid off and is a big part of being in Victory Lane here today. Had to fight for it. Certainly wasn't an easy race with, like you said, the weather. I didn't think the weather was as big of a challenge as I thought it was going to be, specific to the wind. You could feel it, but it didn't put us in anything that I thought was too risqué.

I did feel like the speeding penalty early, middle to late part of the race, was something that was very detrimental. But Paul and the team, they got us in a spot where we could have enough speed and strategy to get back in it.

Got that long run at the end. We knew we had a lot of long-run speed. Sure enough, we were able to hold off the 48, who was really, really fast on his own. Next thing I knew, we were closing in on our teammate. Took a long time to get by Joey. He put up a heck of a fight.

If anyone wants to say that your teammates lay over and give it to you, that's not how we are at Team Penske. We race each other hard but clean. That was something to see and be a part of.

Then, of course, the very end, to be able to pass Kyle and get the win. I know the local media is probably not very thrilled about that. But he did pass me to win the championship last year on the last race. Maybe some tradeoffs there.

A lot of things going on there. It's good. It's good to be back in Victory Lane.

The new rules package today I thought was tremendous. I think you saw, because of the rules package, where the cars fell off a lot at the end of the run and you really had to drive them sideways. Took a lot of balance as a driver, a lot of precise footwork and accuracy with where you put your car, how you place it, which is exactly what we want.

This shouldn't be easy. This is the Sprint Cup Series. These cars should be very hard to drive. At the end of the run they were a challenge. It's nice to be a part of that.

I think the next piece to go with that is somehow trying to convince NASCAR to do one more step and I think the racing will get even better like we saw today.

That's the highlights of how I felt about the day. It was a little bit long.




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