Brad Keselowski, who missed the chance to defend his Sprint Cup championship, showed Saturday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway that he can still get the job done as he ran down and passed Kasey Kahne with nine laps to go for his first victory of the season in the Bank of America 500.
Because he struggled during most of the 2013 season, Keselowski did not qualify for the Chase for the Championship after winning the title a year ago.
Jimmie Johnson, seeking his sixth victory at Charlotte, seemed en route to his seventh until the complexion of the race changed on lap 306 when a caution flag was waved for debris on the backstretch.
Kahne and Jeff Gordon changed only two tires and came out of the pits running 1-2. Johnson and the rest of the top 10 all changed four tires.
Johnson was third, followed by Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch and Keselowski on the restart with 23 laps to go. But as Kahne and Gordon battled for the lead as the green came out, Johnson got loose and dropped all the way to seventh.
Keselowski passed Kenseth for second with 19 laps to go and he and Kahne swapped the top spot with 11 laps to go. But two laps later, Keselowski got by Kahne again and this time pulled away to the win.
Kahne finished second, followed by Kenseth, Johnson and Kyle Busch.
The second five consisted of Kevin Harvick, Gordon, Ryan Newman, Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards.
Kenseth still leads Johnson by three points in the Chas with five races left in the season.
For much of the first half of the race, Dale Earnhardt Jr. looked like a potential race winner as he ran in the top three, leading 19 laps. But Earnhardt, who is still looking for his first win of the season, began to slowly drop back as the race entered its final 200 miles.
And with just over a 100 laps to go, Earnhardt had fallen out of the top 10 telling his crew the car was the “worse it has been all night — the last change just made it worse.”
Two other members of the Chase for the Championship — Joey Logano and Greg Biffle — were both running a lap down and outside the top 15 with 80 laps to go.
Kevin Harvick, who had climbed to within 25 points of first place with his win at Kansas, wasn’t faring much better as he was running 13th at this stage of the race.
Kahne, a four-time winner at CMS, led 121 of the first 177 laps. But after the third caution flag, Johnson began to slowly pull away from Kahne as the race hit the 200-lap mark.
Kenseth struggled during the first half of the race, but his team kept making chassis adjustments on every pit stop, and by lap 200 Kenseth was up to fifth.
Busch had to rally from a pit road miscue on his stop during the first yellow flag on lap 23. Busch was forced to pit a second time for a loose lug nut, dropping him to 36th in the running order.
But Busch, using the high way around the track, was back in the top 10 by the midway point and was running third with just over a 100 miles to go.
NOTES: Johnson has no plans to just “ride” at Talladega next week even though he knows the race is the biggest “wild card” in his bid to win a sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup championship. “With this rules package, riding is not the thing to do,” he said. “You’ll never get back to the front. So, you’ve just got to go race and cross your fingers and go for it. You just hope that Lady Luck is on your side and that you make it through. The guys that we’re racing with right now in the championship historically go and race there. They don’t ride. So even if that opportunity was there, it would have forced our hand to race. I’ve been able to finish all three (restrictor-plate) races so far this year, and I think all three in the top five. Hopefully, we can keep that streak alive.” … Rob Kauffman, the money man behind Michael Waltrip Racing, reportedly is going to split from MWR and start his own team in 2014. The same reports say Jeff Burton will be the driver for the new team. … Another member of MWR, Martin Truex Jr., may also be leaving at the end of the season. Furniture Row Racing owner Barney Visser hopes to hire Truex to replace Kurt Busch, who is moving to Stewart-Haas Racing next year.
