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Keselowski Takes Home Checkered Flag At Atlanta 500

Brad Keselowski Capitalizes On Dominate Kevin Harvick’s Late Speeding Penalty To Win Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Will Harvick Ever Win Atlanta Again?

Even though Kevin Harvick was…well…ABSOLUTELY DOMINATE at Atlanta, leading 292 of the 325 laps, a late speeding penalty on lap 311 found him starting at the back of the field for the final restart!

“This place, for whatever reason, I just feel like I’m snake bitten,” Harvick said. “It’s my own doing today. I really didn’t think I was even close on pit lane. I thought I was being conservative, apparently I wasn’t. … I was just pushing it too hard.

 “One way or another I have figured out how to lose races here at Atlanta after being so dominant.”





Like I had mentioned in my last post…Late cautions can throw a wrench into the best of plans and that surely was the case for Kevin Harvick, whose almost perfect race ended on lap 311 when a caution brought out by Austin Dillion on lap 309 resulted in a speeding penalty for Harvick. The last of 13 speeding penalties handed out to 11 different drivers during the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500.




Keselowski overcame a huge mistake by a member of his pit crew on lap 265. The crew member realized he hadn’t fully tightened the lug nuts on the left rear wheel, forcing Keselowski to return to pit road. The result of this mistake was that even though he beat Harvick off pit road…he was forced to relinquish the #1 position. 

However, Keselowski, over the next 44 laps would fight back into the top ranks and end up restarting 3rd after Harvick’s speeding penalty on lap 311.

After quickly getting by Kenseth, Keselowski set his sights on Larsen, eventually catching and passing him to take home the checkered flag by .564 seconds.





In total there were 13 speeding infraction’s handed out to 11 different drivers at Atlanta. Compared to last year’s race where there was only 1 speeding infraction.

Race cars do not have conventional speedometers, which forces drivers to “guesstimate” their speed based on their cars tachometers. Pit road speeds are measured by time over distance and with the recently installed additional timing and scoring lines bringing the total to 16 segments, there simply isn’t as much room to spread out your average speed!

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the season as drivers hover as close as they can to that line!




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Bryan
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