WATCH: Keselowski stretches fuel cell to win at Kentucky | No. 2 needed tow truck for Victory Lane
When Brad Keselowski‘s No. 2 Ford began to run out of fuel with barely two laps remaining in last Saturday night’s Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway, his crew quickly told him to “get the right switch going, get the right switch going.”
The Team Penske driver, and 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, was able to keep his engine running and hold off Carl Edwards for his fourth win of the season.
If Keselowski was out of fuel, how did he manage to hold off Edwards, continue on and score the victory?
The “right switch” his team referred to controlled the fuel pump to the reserve fuel tank, a small secondary unit located inside the car’s fuel cell. The small box holds less than a gallon of fuel. As the fuel in the primary cell burns off and the level of the fuel drops, the small amount of fuel, less than one gallon, in the reserve stays constant.
Most, if not all, Sprint Cup teams have similar units inside their car’s fuel cells.
“Basically you’re allowed to run like a little Kevlar tank inside your fuel cell,” Rodney Childers, crew chief for the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 4 Chevrolet with Kevin Harvick, said. “It’s just a little square box with round hole in it. … You can basically run the car out of fuel and then flip the switch, which there’s a pump inside that little box, and at least get back to pit road.”
Or in Keselowski’s case, to Victory Lane.
Fuel mileage and track size can come into play. On a bigger track such as Talladega, Daytona or Indy, for example, the amount in the reserve might not be enough to allow a driver to complete a lap or more at speed. That likely wouldn’t be the case on a shorter venue, such as a Bristol or Martinsville.
“I’m sure it’s different for every team,” Richard Childress Racing driver Paul Menard said. “I had to use it (at Kentucky); we were about four laps short and with six laps to go my car stumbled down the frontstretch.”
While Menard said having such a system can be beneficial, he also noted that it has its drawbacks.
“The disadvantage of that — I could have run one more lap or two more laps without stumbling (had the fuel not been held in the reserve box),” he said.
“We don’t have fuel gauges so you just go off that fuel pressure.”