Keselowski wins the Sprint Cup Series Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway

[media-credit name=”Credit: Todd Warshaw/Getty Images for NASCAR” align=”alignright” width=”256″][/media-credit]Brad Keselowski pulled away from Kyle Busch in the final turn on Sunday’s in the Sprint Cup Series Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway to win his sixth career race and his second at Talladega.

Matt Kenseth was the dominate car all day and elected to take the outside line with his teammate Greg Biffle on the final green-white-checkered restart. The two teammates quickly pulled out in front of Keselowski and Busch for the race lead. But Kenseth got too far out in front of Biffle, allowing the Keselowski/Busch duo to make a run on them and take over the lead.

“Our Best Buy Ford was really fast today and nobody could stay locked to it. Greg gave me a great push there on the last restart and we got over into turn two and by the time I realized we were separated we were separated by four car lengths. I should have just made sure that we stayed sealed up and had a chance.” Kenseth said.

“It was close at the end but I just wish I could have stayed on Matt’s bumper. He pulled away from me a little bit. If we could have stayed locked together it would have come down to him and me at the end but we just couldn’t stay locked up with him there at the end.” Biffle said.

Busch was in the cat bird seat running second heading to the finish. But Keselowski was able to get far enough in front of Busch coming out of turns 3 and 4 and easily cruised to victory.

“I had this whole plan if I ever got into that situation where I was leading. I thought about it and thought about it and dreamed about it, what to do. Sure enough going into 3 it was just me and Kyle. I knew the move I wanted to pull and it worked.” Keselowski  said.

Busch finished second, Kenseth third, Kasey Kahne fourth and Biffle finished fifth.

Ryan Newman had to come to the garage on lap 43 with an oil pump problem.

“I smelled oil off of (Turn) 2 and felt the motor tightening-up I lost oil pressure and gained a bunch of water pressure. I just pulled it out of gear. I knew it was blowing up, but just seeing if we had a chance to fix it and hoping we could make it or fix it or whatever. But I’m pretty sure it’s hurt.” Newman said.

Jimmie Johnson had a similar problem on lap 65 and was pushed to the garage.

“Or oil pressure situation we don’t know exactly what it is yet. They are in there working on it. The car still spins over so hopefully we can get things, find out what went wrong, get back out on the track and try to collect some points. It’s just a bummer; we had such a great race car, up there leading the race and had something happen there.” Johnson said.

On lap 141, several cars running out of gas and there was a pile pile up in turns 3 and 4 because of all of the slowing cars.  Landon Cassill, Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Martin Truex Jr., Joey Logano, Juan Montoya, Terry Labonte, Aric Almirola and Dave Blaney all were involved.

“It looked like guys were running out of fuel and going down in there in turn three the guys in front of me stopped and it was just over. We got wrecked. This is Talladega. You come here and you just hope you make it through all that stuff.” Edwards said. Edwards finished 31st.

Casey Mears got loose in turns 1 and 2 on lap 175. He spun up the track and then back down collecting Trevor Bayne.

Bayne was able to battle back and finish 8th.

“We will take that especially after all that mayhem out there. We ran out of fuel once, spun out once after getting hit. I slowed way down and I don’t know what happened. It was a good caution for us because we needed fuel to make it to the end. I think that is a great finish for us.” Bayne said.

With less than 10 laps to go, while running second, Kurt Busch, aka “Ricky Bobby” spun out from slight contact from Keselowski from behind. Busch came to rest after hitting the inside wall. Busch turned around and went the wrong way up the track and continued up pit road.

AJ Allmendinger put the block on Denny Hamlin as Hamlin tried to make a moved to the inside lane on the restart on lap 184. The two cars got together causing a chain reaction crash. Paul Menard, Greg Biffle, Michael Waltrip, Kevin Harvick, Robert Richardson Jr., Tony Stewart and Joey Logano all were caught up in the crash.

The Sprint Cup Series heads to Darlington next week for the Bojangles’ Southern 500 at 6:30 pm.