Brist'ling with excitement

CONCORD, N.C. -- When you think Bristol, you think concrete. When you think concrete, you think Jason Keller.

Keller is the NASCAR Busch Series’ elite talent on concrete race tracks -- i.e. Bristol Motor Speedway and Dover Downs International Speedway. Of his six career victories, one has come at Bristol and one at Dover. A win this weekend would mark his 50th career top-five finish, and bolster his slim 12-point lead over Greg Biffle in the championship chase.

Armed with that impressive resume, Keller enters this weekend’s Channellock 250 (1 p.m. ET, FX TV, PRN Radio) as a marked man. Still yet, he struggled at the half-mile bullring in 2001, posting an 11th-place finish in the spring and a 29th-place effort in the fall.

That simply won’t suffice.

"We were very disappointed with our performance in the spring race,” Keller said. “We went back and tested for the fall race, and really had a good run going, and we got into an accident with 50 laps to go. We were definitely moving back in the right direction from the spring race to the fall race.

“Just going off of the spring race, if I had to go back there I would be disappointed, but I'm really excited based off of the progress we made in the fall. I have won there in the past, so I know I can be successful there, and it's not like I just think I can do it. I know I can do it.”

For certain, Keller has shown his merit thus far in 2002. With a win at Rockingham and three top-fives in four races, he enters this weekend as the series points leader. He had never led the points in his career until winning at The Rock.

"It's all new territory for me and I'm not used to that,” Keller said of being the hunted, rather than the hunter. “It's okay to talk about it, but as a race team, we can't get wrapped up in it and focus on that.

“We need to focus on what we need to do at Bristol to run up front and win the race. The first thing there is that you need to qualify well, because if you don't qualify well, you're not going to be too good.”

Matt Kenseth won this event one year ago, while Kevin Harvick took the fall event. Kenseth will compete this weekend, so look for him to be a player in the No. 17 Ford. Likewise for Scott Riggs, Keller’s ppc Racing teammate, and Biffle, who has yet to win this year but has finished second twice in four races.

Biffle had the best car in the final laps last week at Darlington, but Jeff Burton’s lead proved insurmountable.

“I said all winter long that I felt like Greg Biffle was going to be one of my toughest competitors and he's shown that,” Keller said.

Likewise for Burton. The Winston Cup regular has won the past two Busch Series events in convincing fashion, but hasn’t entered this weekend’s event.

Keller doesn’t mind that, so much.

"I'm going to Bristol with the mindset that I'm going to win," Keller said. "We really struggled last spring at Bristol and that was very disappointing. I love concrete racetracks, so to struggle that way was tough.”

Like the Winston Cup Series, the Busch boys will need good stops on pit road in order to make it Victory Lane, and that will mean battling new rules on the pit lane.

NASCAR officials have altered pit-road rules for this weekend's event, so that now all cars now must pit on what will be considered one pit road.

The Bristol track still has two pit roads, with half the pit stalls on the front stretch and the other half on the back stretch, but drivers must now enter the back stretch pit road off turn two and not return to the track until leaving the front pit road going into turn one.

“It will definitely have some impact on the outcome of the race,” Keller said of the new rules. “You will have a decent shot of having an okay run if you qualify on the back straightaway, but I still don't think that anyone on the back straightaway will have a chance to win the race.

“I think that you're going to have to get yourself a good pit position, top 10, and hopefully we can do that. I still think it will be important to be on the front straightaway. They just leveled it out, but I don't think you'll ever level it out until you have one long pit road, and you're not going to have that at Bristol, so it's always going to be important to pit on the front straightaway."