NASCAR, Hollywood Casino 500: Takeaways from Kansas
By Ted Fleming
3. Did Kansas kill Keselowski?
Kansas Speedway put a hurting on Brad Keselowski with a late race gaffe that would lead to getting hit from behind and spinning into the grass destroying the front end of his No. 2 Ford. In spite of a herculean effort by his crew to get him back out on the track to gain as many points as they could, it lasted one lap before the engine let go and the rest of the day went, literally, up in smoke.
“The guys busted their butt to get me back out,” he said. “They put a whole new front end. There must have been some kind of damage to the engine from the spin. It was running fine before that. I think it is just unfortunate. I am not going to say for sure what happened to cause the spin. We will move forward. If we keep getting the effort like they did to fix this thing we will be fine.”
What happened was Keselowski running up the track into the path of Denny Hamlin and when he checked up, the No. 11 hit him just hard enough to cause the spin. The 38th place finish dropped him out of the top-8 into 11th place and while he is just seven points out of the final spot and Talladega staring him in the face, does this mean he has to win to salvage the disaster in Kansas?
“I don’t think it is a must-win situation. I am not worried about it. I am going to go there and bust my butt to try to win but I don’t think it is a must win yet. We are going to Talladega. I like Talladega. Talladega has been good to me and I am going to drive my butt off and at the end of the day I have faith that if it is meant to be it is meant to be. We can’t get down. There is a long way to go still.”