Sunday’s STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway delivered the excitement that we’ve been waiting to see. Brad Keselowski capitalized on that excitement and earned his 23rd Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS) career win and his second win of the season. Keselowski gave Ford their first win at ‘The Paperclip’ since 2002, however, it didn’t come easy. He had to overcome a speeding penalty on lap 72, but luck eventually fell onto Keselowski’s shoulders on lap 109 when a caution flag fell. He gambled by staying out under caution and retaining the top spot for the upcoming restart.
Kyle Busch was leading the late stages of Sunday’s race, but soon Keselowski caught Busch with 42 laps remaining.
“I was confident that we could come out in front. We had passed Kyle earlier in the race. We had showcased a lot of speed, and I think it was the second segment where we drove from 20th to third, and we had started to run him down, and I felt like if I just gave it some time that it would come our way, and it did,” Keselowski said about his late-race battle with Kyle Busch.
Busch dominated most of Sunday’s race alongside Keselowski, however after being passed for the lead with 42 laps remaining Busch wasn’t able to get Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) their first win of the season. Thus far Toyota has only one win to credit for the season, also with only two JGR cars in the top sixteen in points, they’ll have to step up their game in order to score wins and be in contention come September.
“Our car definitely changed there for the last run of the race, and we just didn’t have what we needed in order to have the speed that we had all the rest of the day. We were able to drive away from the field. We led a lot of laps. We really had no contention there from a lot of people, just passed halfway the rest of the way to the end, and then you put a set of tires on and you lose three-tenths. That was pretty shameful, but we come home P2. So that’s all we had,” Kyle Busch said about his race efforts.
Hendrick Motorsports showed some promising signs after a stage two win and a third place finish with Chase Elliott. Elliott, who is NASCAR’s rising star, has shown consistency all season with two stage wins and is second in the points standings.
“Yeah, we started the race, and for whatever reason my car would not turn at all for the first three or four laps, and I about knocked whoever was on the outside of me back to Charlotte a couple times I felt like on accident, and I thought we were going to drop like a rock. Fortunately, I don’t know if it was just being on the splitter or whatever it was, but actually our car kind of came to life and started turning pretty good, and from there it drove pretty similar throughout the entire day. Like I said, I hope it’s a consistent trend, that we can continue to run decent here. Obviously, we’d love to kind of take that next step and try to contend for a win. But from where I’ve been here in the past, night and day, so I was really happy and proud of that,” Elliott said about his contact during the race and his third place finish.
Next Sunday, the Monster Energy Series will head to the newly paved Texas Motor Speedway with coverage starting at 1:30 p.m. ET on FOX.
