Brad Keselowski’s is a familiar name in Michigan short track racing having cut his teeth on our locat tracks, taking checkered flags at Dixie Motor Speedway and Auto City Speedway among others.
After Sunday, his name is a lot more well known through the rest of the Michigan racing community as the young man from Rochester brought home his first NASCAR Sprint Cup win in a hair-raising victory in the Aaron’s 499 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway.
As for Kay Keselowski, his mother, she couldn’t contain herself as she and eldest son Brian watched Brad duke it out on TV with Carl Edwards down the stretch on the fiercely fast, 2.6-mile tri-oval in Alabama from her home in Rochester Hills.
“I screamed out, ‘Oh, my God!’ “ Kay said Monday. “I saw Carl’s car in the fence. Brian turned to me. ‘By the way, Mom, Brad just won,’ he said. I think I yelled something like ‘Holy crap!’ “
Keselowski pushed Edwards past Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr. into the lead on the final lap, and the 25-year-old Earnhardt protege peeked around Edwards as they closed on the finish line. Edwards ducked low to block the pass, but Keselowski was too close and couldn’t avoid contact that sent Edwards into a spin up the track and into Newman’s path.
Edwards threw two blocks, but Keselowski -- making only his fifth Cup start -- refused to go below the out-of-bounds yellow line. With Keselowski holding his ground, the pair made contact. Edwards flew into Newman, launching Edwards’ No. 99 Ford into the catch-wire fencing, showering spectators with debris.
Bob Keselowski, 57, an ARCA and NASCAR Truck winner, didn’t see Brad take the checkered flag. He was driving back to Rochester Hills from Talladega after Brad had finished ninth and Brian 14th in Saturday’s Aaron’s 312 Nationwide Series race, in which Brad drove for Earnhardt’s JR Motorsports outfit. But he was listening on the radio.
Brad Keselowski’s victory at Talladega has positioned him in a small group of Michigan-born drivers -- he was born in Crittenton Hospital in Rochester -- to win in Cup competition.
Johnny Benson of Grand Rapids, the 2008 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion, won his sole Cup race at Rockingham in 2002. Phil Parsons, who was born in Detroit in 1957, captured his only Cup victory in the 1988 Winston 500 at Talladega.
Cup-winning drivers such as Paul Goldsmith and the late Benny Parsons, Phil’s older brother, spent time in the Detroit area but were not born here.
“I’m feeling really good -- I’m ready to do it again,” Brad said Monday. “Some people are crying it (the last-lap incident) was too dangerous. I didn’t see it that way, apart from the fans who got hurt. It was action and carnage, but it was fun.”
Edwards’ version of events was surprisingly close to Keselowski’s, given that the wreck dropped him to 24th at the finish.
“Brad was pushing—he’s doing everything he can,” said Edwards, who climbed from his car and sprinted the last 100 yards to the finish line. “I saw him go high. I went high. He goes low right here. I didn’t realize he had got that far, so I went low to block, and I didn’t realize he was already there. ...
That’s what Brad’s supposed to do. He’s assuming I know he’s inside. It was so quick I didn’t know he was inside.
Referencing his jog to the start-finish line, Edwards said “I didn’t know if it mattered if I went across the finish line—but I just wanted to finish the race.”
Keselowski won the race in a four-lap dash to the finish that followed the second major wreck of the afternoon, a 10-car incident on the backstretch that was triggered by contact between Denny Hamlin and Juan Pablo Montoya.
The “big one” came early. Before the race was seven laps old, as the field streaked through the third and fourth corners, the cars of Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon got together and the cars trigged a massive wreck that cost Gordon 55 laps before his crew could complete repairs. Mark Martin, last weekend’s race winner at Phoenix, retired to the garage with irreparable damage.
Notes: Eight fans sustained non-life-threatening injuries that ranged from contusions to possible fractured extremities when Edwards’ car slammed into the catch fence, according to speedway medical director Dr. Bobby Lewis. ... The win was the first for Finch in 105 Cup starts. Finch’s first Cup race was in 1990 with Jeff Purvis driving. Finch has raced in the Nationwide Series since 1989 and has 11 wins.
