The Drive for the Cure 300 could have had many winners but Brad Keselowski persevered to bring home the trophy. He avoided multiple crashes, aggressive driving and determinedly made his way to the front, passing teammate Ryan Blaney on lap 187 and holding off Kyle Busch to claim his fourth Nationwide win of the season. It was his third win at Charlotte and his 31st career win in the series.
The first caution of the race occurred on the first lap and involved 11 cars. There were seven more cautions before the end of the race. Tire strategy also came into play as Keselowski got four fresh tires for the restart on lap 182 and eventually passed Blaney who had opted for only two tires to gain track position on lap 169.
“Under the yellow (that preceded the final restart), I was confident,” Keselowski stated. “Then he (Blaney) took off in those first five laps, and I went, ‘Uh, oh.’ I wasn’t holding back, and he was driving away, and then the pendulum swung.
“His car seemed to fall off—whether it was the two tires or just the nature of his car, I don’t know—but it came back to us. Yeah, when the yellow was out, I would have definitely said I was very confident, but after those first five laps, it swung back to us.”
When Keselowski was asked ‘What makes this group so special,’ he replied, “It’s the people, whenever you have a successful team, it’s always the people, right? It’s no different here.”
Second place went to Kyle Busch who was coming on aggressively but ran out of laps. Busch already has six wins in the Nationwide Series this year.
“They were faster than us tonight,” Busch said concerning Keselowski’s No. 22 Team Penske Ford. “Just knew that with about 60 (laps) to go that we had a tire advantage over them, and that was going to be the way for us to win the race.”
Third place went to Matt Kenseth who had led the race on and off but not at the right time, Kenseth has no wins as of yet in the Nationwide Series. Blaney took home a respectable fourth place finish, while fifth place went to Kyle Larson, who drove his car every which way except upside down tonight.
Sixth place went to Chris Buescher and seventh place went to Trevor Bayne. Eighth, ninth, and 10th went consecutively to Chase Elliott (making it his 24th top-10 finish this year), Elliott Sadler and Brian Scott.
The Nationwide Series will head next to Texas Motor Speedway on November 1 for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge.
The top five in points are:
1) Chase Elliott 1106
2) Regan Smith 1064 -42
3) Brian Scott 1045 -61
4) Elliott Sadler 1043 -63
5) Ty Dillon 1045 -64
Complete Finishing Order:
1. Brad Keselowski
2. Kyle Busch
3. Matt Kenseth
4. Ryan Blaney
5. Kyle Larson
6. Chris Buescher
7. Trevor Bayne
8. Chase Elliott
9. Elliott Sadler.
10. Brian Scott
11. Regan Smith
12. Alex Bowman
13. Ryan Sieg
14. Dylan Kwasniewski
15. Ryan Reed.
16. Brendan Gaughan
17. Landon Cassill
18. Mike Bliss
19. Dakoda Armstrong
20. David Starr
21. Ross Chastain
22. Jeremy Clements
23. Kevin Swindell
24. Corey LaJoie
25. Derrike Cope
26. Joey Gase
27. Jamie Dick
28. Chad Boat
29. Carlos Contreras
30. Ty Dillon
31. James Buescher
32. Eric McClure
33. Cale Conley
34. Timmy Hill
35. Jeff Green
36. Matt DiBenedetto
37. Tanner Berryhill
38. Will Kimmel III
39. JJ Yeley
40. Jeffrey Earnhardt
