CONCORD, N.C. — Keselowski held off Cole Custer to win Saturday’s Xfinity Series Alsco 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway to capture his 38th series victory and his fourth at Charlotte. Keselowski won in overtime after the yellow flag came out for debris with two laps remaining.
“It’s kind of an eventful day from the rain and everything that happened there. Strategies, the car handling and things going on this week with Roger and the Hall of Fame, but so far it’s been a great week and I couldn’t ask for a much better start for Memorial Day Weekend than to bring home a win.” Keselowski said.
A hot, humid and an hour-long rain delay didn’t stop Brad Keselowski from becoming the first repeat winner in the NASCAR Xfinity Series this season.
“It was brutally hot out there. The humidity was just killer. I don’t usually get that hot in a race car, but it was smoking out there.” Keselowski said.
Cole Custer finished second, Christopher Bell third, Ty Dillon fourth and Elliott Sadler finished fifth.
Custer was disappointed with his runner-up finish, saying, “I wasn’t happy because you want to win, but our Haas Automation Mustang was pretty good all weekend. I think they kind of got lucky on the strategy and how the cautions flew, but I think we probably had the best car. It is what it is. You give up the track position, but it was fun racing. It’s a real edgy race track and fun to move around the VHT and stuff, so it was a fun race for sure.”
Bell, on fresher tires, thought that he might be able to pass Keselowski on the final restart.
“I had better tires than him and just didn’t execute. I’m going to be curious to look at the restart there and see if – see what happened and why I couldn’t get going. Bottom line, just didn’t do a good job accelerating there and that’s all she wrote,” Bell said.
Ty Dillon came back from a penalty to score a fourth-place finish.
“We had an uncontrolled tire penalty in Stage 3 and had to start in the rear, but our car was so fast that we were back in the top 10 in just a few laps. It was risky, but we decided to play with pit strategy at the end so that we would have fresher tires than the rest of the field to finish out the race. We were so fast but came up three spots short in the end. I can’t thank these RCR guys enough for building such a fast race car. I always like getting in these cars, and I’m looking forward to being back with them in Kentucky.”
Sadler finished fifth and continues to hold the series points lead by 38 over Christopher Bell.
After winning Stage 1 and 2 and leading 93 laps, Kyle Busch was poised to capture his 92nd Xfinity Series victory. But his hopes were dashed on the Lap 161 restart. Busch, who was mired in traffic after a series of cautions and differing pit strategies, spun and slid into Chase Briscoe. He would, however, rally to an eighth-place finish.
The Xfinity Series heads to Pocono Raceway Saturday, June 2, for the 12th race of the season.
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Unofficial Race Results
Alsco 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway
May 26, 2018
Pos Driver
1 Brad Keselowski
2 Cole Custer
3 Christopher Bell
4 Ty Dillon
5 Elliott Sadler
6 Ryan Truex
7 Daniel Hemric
8 Kyle Busch
9 Matt Tifft
10 Kaz Grala
11 Chase Briscoe
12 Michael Annett
13 Ryan Sieg
14 Garrett Smithley
15 Brandon Jones
16 Austin Cindric
17 Joey Gase
18 Joe Nemechek
19 Ray Black Jr.
20 David Starr
21 Spencer Boyd
22 Ty Majeski
23 Tyler Reddick
24 Tommy Joe Martins
25 Josh Bilicki
26 Ross Chastain
27 Brandon Hightower
28 Vinnie Miller
29 Ryan Reed
30 Timmy Hill
31 Jamie McMurray
32 Justin Allgaier
33 Dylan Lupton
34 Alex Labbe
35 Jeremy Clements
36 J.J. Yeley
37 Chase Elliott
38 Josh Williams
39 Jeff Green
40 B.J. McLeod
