(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
Post-race review and analysis from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway.
*Writer not present at the track this week. Observations are from afar.
Who Won?
Brad Keselowski. He led early and often in an impressive second victory at Martinsville.
Who Claimed the Stages?
Keselowski won them both.
Top Stories
Two for (No.) 2
Brad Keselowski had a near-ideal day in Sunday’s STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway. The 2012 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion went to a track he’d led 437 laps at in his career and paced 446 laps in one race, sweeping the stages and scoring both his second victory and Martinsville and a second triumph in 2019 to match points leader Kyle Busch.
It was a dream day, albeit one that wasn’t as easy as it might appear on the surface. Chase Elliott made sure of that.
“I think the stats maybe look a little bit more dominant than I think it really was,” Keselowski said of the run. “I thought Chase was probably the best car most of the day today, and he passed me there with 150 or so to go.
“I thought that might be the end of our day, but I was able to learn a few things from him and kind of dissect his strengths and weaknesses and make some adjustments of our own and come back out and be a little bit better for it.”
The run continued a string of success for the Michigander that dates back nearly a decade.
Keselowski has won at least one race in each of the past nine seasons, and 10 of the past 11 if his shock victory at Talladega Superspeedway in 2009 is included. He’s won multiple races in seven of those nine years, bumping his overall win total up to 29 in the Cup Series since his debut in 2008.
That places Keselowski above the recently retired Carl Edwards for 27th on the all-time wins list, and pushes him within five victories of Hall of Famers Fireball Roberts (33) and Dale Jarrett (32), as well as fellow active competitors Denny Hamlin (32) and Kurt Busch (30).
While he’s rarely listed among the current list of NASCAR greats, Keselowski’s resume stacks up well with the sport’s biggest stars over the past decade. His 28 total Cup victories since 2011 tops teammate Joey Logano’s 21 and occasional rival Denny Hamlin’s 16. It also falls within range of others such as Jimmie Johnson (30), Kevin Harvick (31) and Kyle Busch (34).
The biggest reason Keselowski’s success often goes unnoticed may well be the No. 2 team’s consistency. He’s won multiple races in each year since 2016, but has made the Championship 4 just once due to his No. 2 team’s tendency to have streaks of feast or famine – particularly in the postseason, where they have six finishes outside of the top 30 since the playoff era began in 2014.
Keselowski has ended the year eighth or better in all but one year during the stretch, but has found himself on the outside looking in at Homestead-Miami Speedway in four of the five years. He’s been Phillip Rivers to Busch or Harvick’s Tom Brady, putting up strong stats but rarely earning championship opportunities.
That may be due to change, though. In recent races the No. 2 team seems to have found consistent form. They’ve finished all but one lap in the past 11 races dating back to last year, bringing home an average finish of 6.18 with seven top-fives and a pair of 2019 wins.
The run of success has come on various types of tracks, and it’s garnered Keselowski 12 playoff points to take into the playoffs. That has him positioned well for a postseason push through the early section of the year.
Life is well for the 2012 champions to start of the high downforce era, but the No. 2 team isn’t getting complacent. They know they need to keep performing, lest they risk peaking too soon.
“Every day I wake up in the morning and say, am I better today than I was yesterday,” Keselowski said. “And if I’m not, and if we’re not, we’re going to lose. That’s the simple matter of this. The sport is very dynamic. Technology is changing every day. Somewhere out there right now someone is working on the next advancement that’s going to be critical to winning the playoffs, and we don’t know about it. Might be another team, might be someone in our own group.
“If we stay stagnant, it’s guaranteed we will fall.”
A few laps short
Hendrick Motorsports has endured a difficult start to the 2019 season.
After showing progress at the end of 2018, the organization struggled to open 2019. Two of the team’s four drivers — Alex Bowman and William Byron — currently find themselves outside of the playoff field, and Jimmie Johnson sits just one point to the good.
Those three all continued to struggle in Martinsville, but Chase Elliott gave the team a chance at an early victory with a strong run at the Paper Clip.
Unfortunately for the Georgian, the effort would fall just short.
Elliott appeared to have the strongest car with the laps winding down at Martinsville. He made his way around Keselowski on Lap 325 and led the ensuing 49 laps before a caution flag sent the field to pit road. They were his first laps led since the penultimate race of 2018 at ISM Raceway.
Unbeknownst the Elliott, they would also be his last. Keselowski’s Team Penske crew pushed him past Elliott’s No. 9 during the set of stops, and Keselowski held Elliott off for the remainder of the race. Elliott spent the final 100 laps battling Kyle Busch for second and lurking behind Keselowski in traffic, unable to complete an overtake for the lead.
In the final laps the young star found himself in position for a possible bump-and-run, but Keselowski pulled away inside of 20 to go to keep the 23-year-old at bay. A last-ditch move to the high lane helped Elliott close the gap to Keselowski over the last five laps, but he ran out of time to reach the veteran’s rear bumper.
Elliott took the checkered flag just .594 seconds behind Keselowski in second. Afterwards he was left to rue a day that could have ended in victory, wondering what more he could have done.
“I felt like we were about as even with him as we could be,” Elliott said of Keselowski. “When I did get the lead, I felt like there was a little advantage to being out front and being able to work traffic your way and play off it and whatnot.
“But, yeah, I tried to move up there at the end and I don’t know if I could have got to him. Maybe if I moved up a little sooner, maybe. But, I tried to get to him there in (Turn) 3, but maybe next time.”
If nothing else, Elliott can take solace in the improvement his Martinsville run did for his playoff hopes. The fourth-year driver gained 25 points on the playoff bubble, pushing him nearly a full race clear with a 53-point edge in ninth.
Overcoming adversity
Defending race winner Clint Bowyer didn’t celebrate another victory on Sunday, but he certainly passed enough cars. Bowyer overcame two speeding penalties on pit road to secure a seventh-place finish, jumping from 15th to 13th in the championship standings as a result.
The recovery was impressive. But Bowyer was more concerned with the pit road issues that trapped him there after seeing a potential top-five slip away.
“I guess we need to get our stuff together on being on the same page with that pit road speed,” Bowyer said. “It’s such an important thing and such a big part of this style of racing, where track position is everything.”
Bowyer didn’t have any issues on pit road during the early stages of the race. The two penalties came in successive stops after the race had surpassed 300 laps, leaving the Kansas native wondering what had changed.
He didn’t make excuses for himself or his No. 14 team, saying “It’s obviously on us. We just weren’t on the same page.”
But Bowyer did bring up an interesting point about the lack of genuine pit stop practice available with the two-day weekend.
“We push it to the limit, but it’s so hard to practice pit road speed” Bowyer said. “You’ve got trucks on pit road when you’re trying to practice that. I’m not making any excuses, it’s just when you’re trying to pinch every little thing out of it, it was hard this week to practice pit road speed because of all the stuff on pit road.”
One week removed from a pit road speeding penalty of his own, Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin found himself recovering from a pit road mistake from his No. 11 crew. The group encountered an uncontrolled tire during a mid-race stop, causing a penalty that mired Hamlin back in the pack.
The Virginian battled back to finish fifth, rising to second in the standings and continuing his strong start to the 2019 season. But Hamlin acknowledged the need for both himself and his team to improve on pit road in upcoming races.
“We’ve got to get better,” Hamlin said. “We know that. We’re struggling a little bit right now for sure, but certainly it’s a team thing. Last week I had a speeding penalty so it all equals out.
“If you’re not going to be the best car, you have to execute perfectly. The best car didn’t falter so it wouldn’t have made a difference either way, but certainly cost us maybe one or two spots today. Nothing to hang our heads about.”
Other Notes
- Kyle Busch had a relatively quiet day in Martinsville a day removed from his 201st NASCAR national series victory, but the Nevadan rose up in the final stage to finish third. He’s ran sixth or better in every 2019 start, with two wins and an average finish of 2.7 through six Cup Series races.
- Daniel Suarez was never a frontrunner on Sunday, but the Mexican had arguably his most consistent drive since coming to Stewart-Haas Racing. Suarez spent the majority of the day in the top-15 before securing his second top-10 of the season in 10th. Suarez is currently on the right side of the playoff bubble – albeit by a lone point.
- Martinsville continued a recent trend of minor progress for the Dillon brothers. Austin Dillon followed his Auto Club Speedway top-10 up with an 11th-place run, rising within four points of the playoff bubble. Ty Dillon finished two spots behind his brother in 13th, giving Germain Racing its third top-15 run in six races – a notable feat given that the group had just five top-15s in the entirety of 2018.
- Speaking of minor progress, Bubba Wallace ended his Martinsville run in 17th for Richard Petty Motorsports. That’s a feat worth celebrating for the group, given that they had an average finish of 28.6 in 2019 entering Sunday’s race.
- Chip Ganassi Racing’s quiet strength for Chevrolet was nowhere to be seen in Martinsville. Kurt Busch salvaged a serviceable 12th-place effort, but Kyle Larson struggled en route to an 18th-place effort.
