From the jaw-jarring bumps of the old pavement in which Kentucky Speedway takes such pride, here is what was surprising and not surprising from the 4th Annual Quaker State 400 presented by Advance Auto Parts.
Surprising: Dominance and redemption surprisingly co-existed in the Bluegrass state. Penske dominated, from qualifying to Victory Lane for Brad Keselowski, yet there was also redemption for several drivers, including Tony Stewart, who rebounded from an engine change to finish 11th, as well as Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick, who both had struggles in the pits and went on to finish sixth and seventh respectively.
“Yeah, what a really fast car,” Keselowski said after his second win of the season and his second win at Kentucky in the No. 2 car. “It feels really good, obviously, to get that second win.”
“We have got a really good stretch run going here over the summer, so it’s very exciting for me personally, very rewarding, and I feel like we’re in such a strong spot,” Keselowski continued. “A lot of momentum, and this was really a big night for us in so many ways.”
Stewart, Gordon and Harvick may not have been in Victory Lane, but all three felt redeemed nonetheless.
“I would’ve liked to have been a little better than what we were there at the end, but I think we definitely had to fight our way up there through the day,” Stewart said. “We never did anything tricky to get track position. We pitted every time the pits were open. We didn’t do any less than anybody else did on any stop.”
“All in all, I thought we had a pretty honest day there and I can’t complain about that.”
Not Surprising: Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 18 M&Ms Toyota, played it fast and loose, right into the runner up position. This was Busch’s fourth top-10 finish in four races at Kentucky Speedway and his seventh top-10 finish of the season.
“I got to traffic, man, I just got too loose,” Busch said. “I was kind of loose the whole run, but I kept getting looser and looser throughout the run, where normally the rest of the runs prior to that throughout the race I was getting tighter throughout the run.”
“I was loose the whole race,” Busch continued. “I was loose, but it was a drivable loose, it wasn’t just a wrecking loose, until the end, and then I was wrecking.”
“For as loose as I was I had good grip and I was moving forward,” Busch said. “It looked like a lot of guys were struggling with the same issues I was but worse, so I was able to go by them, so I felt pretty good about it.”
Surprising: As a past champion, Brad Keselowski most certainly knows how to celebrate, but this time it resulted in some surprising bodily harm. Thanks to a broken bottle of champagne in Victory Lane, the victor ended up with four stitches to boot.
“We were playing around with some champagne bottles and as I told my good friend, ‘We should have stuck with beer,’” Keselowski said. “We were having too much fun with champagne and one of the bottles broke and I cut my hand open. It’s no big deal.”
“It’s all fixed now, so we’re good,” Keselowski continued. “Yeah, welcome to the party. It’s all good. I’m just glad we won. It’s a lot better story when you win and get hurt.”
Not Surprising: Usually race car drivers emerge after the race being mad at other drivers, but there was one driver who was just mad at himself after the Quaker State 400.
“The first wreck one of those lapped cars spun in front of us and when he spun he lit up his rear tires and made a huge smoke cloud,” Aric Almirola, driver of the No. 43 Eckrich Ford, said. “My spotter, Tyler, was telling me to go high and I was kind of in the middle of the race track to see what he was gonna do and at the last minute he was like, ‘Go high, go high,’ so I veered high and McMurray was out there.”
“I honestly had no idea he was out there and I ran into him, so I feel horrible,” Almirola continued. “I’m just mad at myself. I realize circumstances weren’t in our favor, but I should have done a better job of getting slowed down and not running into the 1 car.”
Surprising: Kentucky race weekend was certainly a good one for Ryan Newman, with Caterpillar Inc. renewing their sponsorship on his car, and with a third place finish, just his second top-10 at Kentucky Speedway.
“Just a good, solid night for the Caterpillar Chevrolet,” Newman said. “All the guys did a really good job strategy wise. Kept our track position all night.”
“Good job for everybody at RCR and ECR, and we’ll keep digging.”
Not Surprising: Clint Bowyer took to Twitter and told it like it was for his No. 15 5-Hour Energy race team after finishing 23rd.
“Got our natural asses kicked tonight,” Bowyer tweeted after the race. “Testing this week to get to the bottom of a few things. We WILL get it fixed!!!”
Surprising: After a tire issue sent rookie Kyle Larson hard into the wall and out of the race, Austin Dillon became the highest finishing rookie. The driver of the No. 3 Cheerios Protein Chevrolet took the checkered flag in the 16th position.
Larson does, however, still lead in the Sunoco Rookie of the Year battle and has scored Rookie of the Race honors eleven times to Dillon’s five.
“Blew a right front (tire),” Larson said dejectedly. “This is the first time that’s ever happened to me in stock car racing.”
“So, big hits,” Larson continued. “But it sucks. We were hoping for a good points day to pad our points were we are before we go to Daytona where it’s a real crapshoot. It’s disappointing to have two weekends that didn’t end up very well the last couple of races.”
“Oh, well. That’s how it goes,” Larson said. “We’ll try and go to Daytona and rebound and gain some more points.”
Not Surprising: Joey Logano proved that not only was his teammate powerful, but he had Penske power to boot, finishing ninth place in spite of being down a cylinder.
“I think Team Penske dominated Kentucky this weekend, it’s just unfortunate we dropped a cylinder there, but it’s still a top-10 out of being down one cylinder,” Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford, said. “We’ll take that.”
Surprising: Matt Kenseth, in his No. 20 Dollar General Toyota, proved his worth to his sponsor, who announced prior to the race that they would increase their primary sponsorship from 27 to 30 races. Kenseth finished fourth and felt that “Overall, it was a positive weekend.”
“I feel like we’re gaining on it,” Kenseth continued. “I thought we had a pretty good car. They had a great stop and got me good track position and I was able to get up two or three spots for the restart and hang onto fourth.”
Not Surprising: Dale Jr. was fired up and ready to go after struggling mightily in practice, qualifying 29th, yet racing back to finish fifth, scoring his ninth top-five in 2014. And with that, Junior became the only driver so far with that many top-fives for the season to date.
“So Steve (Letarte, crew chief) and the guys did a good job in having to deal with me and trying to put a good car under me this weekend,” Junior said. “It was a lot of fun in the race.”
“It just fired me up … (and) they put a good setup under the car,” Earnhardt continued. “It wasn’t the best car out there, but we finished where we should have tonight with the speed the car the showed.”
The Cup Series next heads to Daytona International Speedway for the Coke Zero 400 Powered by Coca Cola on Saturday, July 5th. Happy Independence Day!
