Keselowski Gets Push From Busch to Win Talladega at BetLM

TALLADEGA (NASCAR/Newsfeed) — The leader on the last lap isn’t sup­posed to win at Tal­ladega Super­speed­way. Every­body knows that.

Brad Keselowski dis­agrees, and he showed how to do it Sun­day with a cal­cu­lated plan that sent him to Vic­tory Lane.

Keselowski used a big push from Kyle Busch to pass leader Matt Kenseth, and after leav­ing the Day­tona 500 win­ner in their wake, Keselowski staved off Busch’s attempt to snatch the win. Using a move Keselowski said he had dreamed about, he held on for his sec­ond win of the sea­son and sec­ond at Talladega.

“I had this whole plan if I ever got in that sit­u­a­tion where I was lead­ing; I thought about it and thought about it, dreamed about what to do, and sure enough, going into (turn) three, it was just me and Kyle,” Keselowski said. “I knew the move I wanted to pull. It worked because the guy run­ning sec­ond should have the advan­tage, but I had this move all worked up in my mind.”

Keselowski was the first dri­ver in the last five races at Tal­ladega to take the white flag and hold on for the win. He did it with a plan that left both Busch and Kenseth flat-footed, and both praised Keselowski after the race.

“He’s no dummy, that’s for sure,” said Busch, who wound up sec­ond for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day.

Busch was the leader on the last lap of Saturday’s Nation­wide Series race, and was passed by Joey Logano right at the fin­ish line. He con­ceded there’s lit­tle the leader can do to pre­serve the vic­tory on the last lap of a restrictor-plate race, and pre­dicted how Sun­day would unfold.

“If you’re lead­ing, being pushed, plan on fin­ish­ing sec­ond. That’s all there is to it,” Busch said after Saturday’s defeat.

So he should have been sit­ting pretty after push­ing Keselowski to the front. Instead, Keselowski went high into the third turn, then pulled off of Busch’s bumper to cre­ate some separation.

“That allowed me to drive untouched to the check­ered flag,” Keselowski said. “It wasn’t easy to con­vince myself to do that, but it was the right move.”

Busch ini­tially seemed dumbfounded.

“I must have screwed some­thing up, because we got to turn three and came unhooked,” Busch said. “Just gave the win away over there. Not sure exactly what hap­pened. We def­i­nitely need to go back and fig­ure out what it was.”

Kenseth didn’t feel much bet­ter. He led seven times for a race-high 73 laps, but believed he gave the win away on the final restart.

A nine-car acci­dent with four laps remain­ing brought out the yel­low flag, set­ting up a two-lap over­time sprint to the fin­ish. Kenseth, as the leader, got to pick where he wanted to restart and chose the out­side line so Roush Fen­way Rac­ing team­mate Greg Bif­fle would line up behind him and pre­sum­ably push him to the victory.

That put Keselowski and Busch together on the inside line, but they drifted back on the restart as Kenseth indeed was able to jump out to a huge lead.

It was prob­a­bly too big of a lead.

Kenseth got a lit­tle too far away from Bif­fle, which gave the Keselowski-Busch tan­dem a chance to catch him. The two cars sailed past Kenseth on the out­side line.

“I think we had the win­ning car, really just didn’t have the win­ning dri­ver,” Kenseth said. “I looked for­ward for a sec­ond, when I looked back, Greg and I were sep­a­rated, those guys were already out­side of him. With me not pay­ing atten­tion, keep­ing us hooked up, just cost us a shot at the win, cost Greg a shot at the win.”

“I wasn’t too fast. I was just too stu­pid I guess at the end to keep a win.”

It put Keselowski in Vic­tory Lane for the sec­ond time this sea­son, which helps his cham­pi­onship chances. He’s been streaky through the first 10 races of the year, and even with this sec­ond vic­tory, he’s only ranked 12th in the Sprint Cup standings.

But those wins should guar­an­tee him at least a wild-card berth into the 12-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup cham­pi­onship field.

“Two wins, with the wild card and all, that almost makes you immune to miss­ing the Chase,” Keselowski said. “This team is going to be strong come Chase time. The best is yet to come.”

The vic­tory con­tin­ued a hot streak for team owner Roger Penske, who won for the first time in the Sprint Cup Series at Tal­ladega. It was also the first win for man­u­fac­turer Dodge at Tal­ladega since Dave Mar­cis in 1976.

Penske, mean­while, has won all four of the Indy­Car races so far this sea­son and dri­ver Will Power is lead­ing the series stand­ings as they pre­pare for the May 27 Indi­anapo­lis 500. For now, though, the team owner is think­ing about where Keselowski can take him.

Penske has never won a Cup title since enter­ing NASCAR in 1972, although he was out of the series from 1981 through 1990. Keselowski gave him a Nation­wide Series cham­pi­onship in 2010, his only NASCAR title.

“Obvi­ously, one of the goals in my life is to sit up on that stage (at the cham­pi­onship ban­quet), and I think he’s the guy that can make it hap­pen this year,” said Penske, who called it the per­fect race.

That might be going a lit­tle too far, which even Keselowski would admit.

He helped cause a cau­tion with seven laps to go when he ran into the back of for­mer Penske team­mate Kurt Busch. Keselowski was apolo­getic imme­di­ately after climb­ing from his car in Vic­tory Lane.

“I got to Kurt and tried to push him. He tried stay­ing in line. He didn’t want to go,” Keselowski said. “He prob­a­bly didn’t know what was going on behind him, which is nat­ural. When he decided not to go, I tried to force him to go. It was a com­bi­na­tion of events that were unfor­tu­nate. I hated to see that happen.”

On the restart with four laps remain­ing, Penske’s other dri­ver, AJ All­mendinger, was part of the acci­dent that stopped the action again.

It was the last of five cau­tions in yet another race that fea­tured fairly clean rac­ing. NASCAR’s now had six con­sec­u­tive unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally clean races, which drew a tongue-and-cheek response from defend­ing series cham­pion Tony Stew­art, who was col­lected in the All­mendinger accident.

“I’m upset that we didn’t crash more cars,” said Stew­art, who fin­ished 24th. “That’s what we’re here for. I feel bad if I don’t spend at least $ 150,000 in torn-up race cars going back to the shop. We’ve def­i­nitely got to do a bet­ter job at that.”

Kasey Kahne fin­ished fourth and was fol­lowed by Bif­fle, Clint Bowyer and David Ragan. Trevor Bayne was eighth, Dale Earn­hardt Jr. ninth and Jeff Bur­ton rounded out the top 10.