[media-credit name=”Brad Keppel” align=”alignright” width=”225″]
[/media-credit]Brad Keselowski has claimed his second victory in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series today at Bristol Motor Speedway. It was in commanding fashion that the 28 year-old Michigan native captured his first victory of 2012 in front of a less than average crowd for the Last Great Coliseum.
Five potential race winners were taken out on lap 25 of today’s 500 lap escapade, an accident that involved the likes of Kasey Kahne, Marcos Ambrose, 5-time Bristol winner Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Regan Smith, and a lightning fast No. 99 Kellogg’s/Cheez-It Ford belonging to Carl Edwards. At least three of the five cars involved had all made strides towards the front and were making headway on the field.
Besides a few single-car spins/issues, the race remained green for the remainder of the 454 laps today at Bristol Motor Speedway. It was a two-car tango as the race wore on with Roush Fenway Racing’s Matt Kenseth being the only other chariot to challenge Keselowski for the trophy. The race’s final caution flag flew on lap 479 when defending Sprint Cup Series Champion, Tony Stewart tagged the wall in turn 3. The caution provided Kenseth with the restart he needed to challenge the Blue Deuce for the win. Keselowski opted for the outside line on the Food City 500’s final restart, coming at lap 438. The outside line was the fastest all day, and proved to be the race-winning line when the scoring pylon read 500 today in Thunder Valley.
The win for Keselowski boosted him in the points standings 8 spots to 13th, and he commented on his battle with Kenseth in Victory Lane; “Matt didn’t make it easy, that’s his job to not make it easy on me. He raced me hard, I raced him hard, rubbed a little bit. That’s good racing.”
Twitter started blowing up immediately following Keselowski’s arrival to Victory Lane as a tweet came out from @keselowski with a photo of FOX’s Krista Voda pointing into the Blue Deuce in congratulations.
Keselowski laid claim to the trophy this afternoon in the 52nd Annual Food City 500, and just his second top-10 of 2012. He lead a race and career-high 232 laps this afternoon en route to his 5th career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory.
Despite having a strong car all day, Matt Kenseth landed in second, followed by Martin Truex Jr. in third. The next two drivers were both Michael Waltrip Racing cars with Clint Bowyer finishing fourth and stand-in driver Brian Vickers rounding out the top-5. Jeff Burton had a strong run, finishing 6th, Jamie McMurray finished 7th followed by teammate Juan Montoya in 8th, and Jimmie Johnson and Paul Menard rounding out the top-10.
The top-2 in points left Bristol unchanged when points-leader Greg Biffle finished 13th, and second-place Kevin Harvick salvaging his No. 29 Budweiser Chevy with an 11th-place run. Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth moved into 3rd, and Martin Truex Jr. jumped four spots into 4th place in the points standings.
