Brad Keselowski starts first and finishes first at Kentucky for second win of 2014
There was no disputing who had the best car on Saturday night at Kentucky. It was Brad Keselowski and his No. 2 car.
After starting first, Keselowski was at the front of the field the entire evening, retaking the lead from Kyle Busch with 19 laps to go and driving away for the win.
When we say Keselowski was at the front of the field the entire evening, it's not an exaggeration. There were 267 laps in Saturday night's race. Keselowski led 199 of them. Yeah, it was domination. After the race, Keselowski told his crew that he felt like the team was in championship form. Watching the race, it's hard to disagree with him.
His laps led tally could have been higher too. Busch took the lead because the race's final caution flag happened during a cycle of green flag pit stops. Busch was on and off pit road before the caution was officially out, so he got to restart first while Keselowski, who hadn't pitted yet, pitted under yellow and restarted sixth.
But driving through the field was ultimately no problem.
"Oh yeah, It was kind of one of those races where you just know you have a really fast car and my Miller Lite Ford Fusion was hauling the mail," Keselowski said. "And you're just waiting for something to go wrong. And it did there on that last yellow, it just caught us out of sequence. And we restarted sixth and had a decent restart but I didnt think I was going to catch Kyle and the car was that great."
Yes, yes it was. Keselowski led the race's first 78 laps and when he was passed for the lead, it wasn't under green. Teammate Joey Logano took the lead from him on pit road. And he was only passed for the lead once under green. That happened on lap 182, when Logano got by him shortly after a restart. The first time a Team Penske car led a lap? That was when Busch took the lead after the final caution flag on lap 214.
Did we tell you how good Keselowski was?
There's a good reason for Keselowski's championship form optimism. Not only is Kentucky his second win of the season, it's his second win of the year on a 1.5 mile tracks. Now, we don't need to tell you that all 1.5 mile tracks aren't the same, and we probably don't need to tell you that half of the 10 races of the Chase are on 1.5 mile tracks either. But we are because of that heavy presence and Keselowski's form, there's no reason to think the No. 2 is the strongest non-Hendrick Motorsports-associated contender for the Sprint Cup Series title.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
