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Brad Keselowski said his seventh-place finish at Charlotte Motor Speedway this past Sunday put his team “in a good spot,” but the former series champion admitted, “You can’t take it for granted.”
“We need to go to this weekend’s race in Kansas, put up a solid finish and get ourselves in position to where we can sleep easy for Talladega,” he said Tuesday. “That’s kind of where my head is at.”
It was the seventh consecutive top-10 result for the driver of the No. 2 Team Penske Ford, a streak of consistency no one else in the Chase can claim.
He enters this weekend’s Kansas event, the Hollywood Casino 400, fourth in points, and the 22-point gap back to eighth could be described as comfortable.
Only the top eight from the Round of 12 advance after stops at Kansas and Talladega have been completed.
The Charlotte race took quite a toll on the Chase field, with five drivers finishing 30th or worse, thus creating an unexpectedly large gap between those up top and those in the rear of the field. Even though Denny Hamlin sits eighth in the latest standings, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver is only eight points ahead of Kevin Harvick (Stewart-Haas Racing) in 12th. Sandwiched in between are Austin Dillon (Richard Childress Racing), Chase Elliott (Hendrick Motorsports), and Joey Logano (Team Penske).
Meanwhile, Martin Truex sits seventh, but a much more comfortable 19 points ahead of the first driver on the outside and 16 ahead of Hamlin. The points gap expands substantially going in the other direction, with race winner Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth, Kyle Busch, Keselowski and others in the top half of the 12-team field seemingly out of harm’s way.
It is a situation, Keselowski said, that “drastically changes the dynamic” of the Chase going forward.
“When I look at this format that we have, there’s really two ways you can get in, that’s through consistency and winning,” he said. “When you look at the simple math, there are four cars that are going to be eliminated and five cars that are in really rough shape, that aren’t going to have the opportunity to be consistent and make their way in. So they’re kind of pigeonholed into the other half of the equation, so to speak.
“Being one of the cars that is kind of in-between, that had a strong run and has a pretty good point gap, that all but guarantees that you can use consistency if you are one of those cars. That certainly changes mindsets.”
The expectation is that one of the five will likely win — at either Kansas or Talladega. “Because they are going to take chances,” he said. “And when there are five of them you can take more chances and it makes more sense to do that when you are in that hole.”
That’s not to say trouble won’t find one of those higher up in the standings — that’s certainly been the case in previous Chase races — but Keselowski said it’s a less-likely scenario.
“Because if you’re a car that has any kind of a gap right now, you’re just going to go and lay up at Kansas,” he said. “You’re going to try really hard not to put yourself in that situation.
“Certainly there are some situations that you can’t avoid — you blow a tire or things like that happened to Joey (Logano) this weekend, those aren’t avoidable situations. You could break down. But the reality is if you have a pretty good gap, you’re probably going to take a log off the fire.
“It can happen. There are things you can’t control. But there are things you can control.”