When Brad Keselowski won the summer race at Bristol last year some people alluded to a technicality which helped him win.
This time there was no question as he dominated the later stage of the 500-lapper at the half mile high-banked oval. “I got on Twitter and got kind of PO’d at some people that said I won it because of the timing line. I knew this Blue Deuce was fast enough to win the race last fall with or without timing lines. It feels so good to just prove it here today in the spring race,” Keselowski said. Keselowski blasted off on restart with 16-laps to go holding off Matt Kenseth for this second Bristol win.
Speaking of Kenseth, this year’s Daytona 500 winner Keselowski said “well that’s his job to not make it easy and he did a good job. He raced me hard and I raced him hard. We rubbed a little bit, but that’s good racing.” Kenseth explained how he lost “I got pretty good restarts. I got rolling pretty good both times and we got to the lines pretty even. He was just better than me. He could keep his tires on the car a little better and got off the corner that much better than me to where I couldn’t get by him. That was the difference.” Keselowski also narrowly avoided the six-car wreck on lap 24 which claimed some of the better drivers like Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, and Kevin Harvick when Regan Smith tangled with Kasey Kahne. Harvick was able to repair his car and recovered for an 11th place finish.
Kahne put some of the blame on his spotter. “I’m under Regan Smith as slow as he was I knew when my spotter cleared me in the center I would be clear on exit. He said ‘all clear good to go’. So when I get to the exit I knew Regan (Smith) was slow and then he was back there. I listened too much to my spotter I guess.” Michael Waltrip Racing had the next three finishers with regulars Martin Truex Jr., Clint Bowyer and the part-time return of Brian Vickers (for six races). Vickers led some laps. Vickers who had no job when the Red Bull team folded at the end of last year said "This was pretty good and it felt really good when we were out there leading. It would have been awesome to hold onto that, but it's the first time back so I can't complain about that.” And, on lap 359, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had an incident brushing Jeff Gordon’s car flattening his teammate’s tire causing Gordon to hit the wall. “I know that it wasn’t intentional, but it certainly ruined our day,” said Gordon.
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