Stock cars aren’t equipped with fuel gauges.
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Smoke from a fire in the parking lot at Kentucky Speedway can be seen from the track.
Told to “flip his switches”, by his team, Keselowski managed to hold off second-place Carl Edwards, Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch to win on Kentucky’s newly repaved surface.
Keselowski’s gas tank was so empty that he couldn’t perform a celebratory burnout; his vehicle had to be pushed to victory lane by a safety truck.
With seven laps remaining in the race, Keselowski and crew chief Paul Wolfe elected not to pit for fuel but conserve what was left in the tank. I think anytime you have a track like this, it lends itself to compromises with race vehicle drivers, techniques and auto setups, and all those things that tend to open up the box to allow for better racing, because whenever there are those discrepancies, I think that forces mistakes, shows strengths and weaknesses that vary from auto to car and driver to driver.
Keselowski took the lead from Kevin Harvick on lap 200. Fortunately for him, most of his competitors would have the same problem. “This was a hard-fought battle, and I’m really proud of everybody on the 2 crew to get win number four and take that first place”.
(7) Martin Truex Jr., Toyota, 267. But the topsy-turvy event made some of the answers less clear-cut than most, with drivers’ mixed reviews expressing their quibbles about the 1.5-mile track’s treacherous conditions but their understanding about why the race played out the way it did. I think that’s five mile-and-a-halfs we pretty much dominated and we only won one of them.
Edwards, who was also anxious about fuel, had closed the gap on the slow-going Keselowski. Teammate Matt Kenseth, pressuring Keselowski from second, soon followed, leaving just the race leader and a few slower cars staying on the no-stop strategy.
“We’ve known as an industry that the repaves are very, very hard historically”, Miller said. Jones never got the chance to put room between him and Busch as Ray Black Jr. quickly spun out to draw the yellow flag.
To be honest, it was Harvick who led the most laps with 128, Kez next with 75 and then Truex with 46.
SPARTA, Ky. – Martin Truex Jr. had the fastest vehicle and Kevin Harvick led the most laps.
The victory was significant for Keselowski.
This is the second (and likely final) time the package will be used before its likely approval for the 2017 season. The race was barely back to green when six-time Cup champ Jimmie Johnson slammed into the Turn 4 wall on Lap 32.
Lap 194 produced the 11th caution of the race, tying the record set a year ago, but from a restart on Lap 200 through the finish on Lap 267, the race ran green, and Keselowski was able to squeeze 68 laps out of his fuel cell. Though 12 drivers will qualify, a victory between now and then will guarantee a spot for a series regular.
Numerous wrecks came in Turn 3, where the track’s grading had been increased. “This was no different”.
Particularly perilous throughout the race were the flatter of the two corners -Turns 3 and 4 – with the entry to Turn 3 especially daunting. “I think it’s just red”. “That’s what won us the race”.
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Even the top drivers were getting wrapped up with trouble early. “That’s a part of this package”. The two kids way out front here are Chase Elliott, who right now is qualified for the Chase playoffs, and Ryan Blaney, who is just beyond the cut line.
