CUP: Keselowski’s Failed Gamble Tightens Title Hunt

Sprint Cup

CUP: Keselowski’s Failed Gamble Tightens Title Hunt

Brad Keselowski led the most laps at Charlotte, but finished 11th…

Tom Jensen | Posted October 13, 2012 Concord, NC

Brad Keselowski, driver of the No.2 Miller Lite Dodge, stands in the garage area during practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)

Brad Keselowski was poised to drive a stake through the heart of his competitors in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, but a critical blunder during Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway left the door wide open for his competition.

Keselowski was dominating the race, having led 140 of the first 275 laps, when he tried to stretch his fuel mileage too far and ran out of gas on Lap 276. He coasted into the pits and sat on pit road for a full 22 seconds as his Penske Racing crew furiously tried to fill his fuel cell and re-fire his Dodge.

What should have been Keselowski’s third victory in the first five Chase events turned into an 11th-place finish, as Clint Bowyer stole the race win and Keselowski lost at least 14 points to his rivals by not winning.

“It was like playing blackjack,” said Keselowski, who unofficially leads third-place BofA 500 finisher Jimmie Johnson by seven points and race runner-up Denny Hamlin by 15 at the midpoint of the Chase. “Sometimes you’re going to get a good deal, but you’re not going to win ‘em all. We know that. And you hope when you’re sitting there with 13 that you can just not have a lot of chips in the pile.”

Keselowski insisted it could have been much worse.

“We didn’t lose too much,” said Keselowski. “We got 11th out of a day where everything kind of fell against us.”

Johnson, who was beaten by Keselowski in a fuel-mileage race at Dover two weeks earlier, was philosophical about what happened to the points leader.

“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” Johnson said, laughing. “I saw him (Keselowski), he was going down the back and had a lot of speed, so I figured he was going to be fine. I don't know how much it hurt him at the end of the day. But he was still rolling pretty quick.”

Both Johnson and Hamlin said they felt new life in the title hunt after Charlotte. And both said it’s a three-way battle for the title now.

“I feel great, and I think that we see three very equal teams and cars, and teams and cars that are showing up at the racetrack ready to go each week,” said Johnson. “This has been a lot of fun. I think we're probably at the halfway point now, to have us three this tight, the good, hard competitive racing, the respect for one another, I've had a lot of fun over these five races and I know the next five will be great, too.”

“Yeah, I think we're just rewinding where we were in the points two races ago,” added Hamlin. “ I think that's right where it was. I think I was 16 back and he was like five or eight or something like that, and it's right back where it was two races ago. We made up Talladega and we made up one other racetrack. So it's good. You want to close the gap, especially for myself, knowing that we're hitting our best racetracks later in this Chase and not at the beginning.”

With his victory, Bowyer moved up one position to fourth in points, 28 out of the lead and still nominally in the title discussion.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.

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Tom Jensen

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