Team Penske driver on pit road penalty: 'I swung, we missed'
RELATED: Full All-Star Race results
CONCORD, N.C. -- Brad Keselowski borrowed a baseball analogy to describe his decision to push the envelope during the final intermission in Saturday night's NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race. Rather than leave the bat on his shoulder in the ninth inning, Keselowski dug in deeper leaving pit road for the final time.
That decision netted Keselowski a pivotal pit road speeding penalty just before the 10-lap final segment, sending the Team Penske No. 2 Ford to the back of the field and dooming his chances at his first All-Star victory.
"Sorry, man. I just had to pull out all the stops to get that pit road spot," Keselowski told crew chief Paul Wolfe post-race, making an allusion to going down swinging shortly after rallying to a ninth-place finish. "… Probably not what you want to hear, but thanks for everything."
Keselowski finished first in two of the four 25-lap preliminary segments, boosting his average finish to the top of the 20-car field and placing him first in the realigned running order before the mandatory four-tire pit stop. After coming in for service, Keselowski eased ahead of speedy Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch, pulling alongside eventual race winner Denny Hamlin at the exit of pit road.
But instead of lining up second and on the front row for the final restart, Keselowski was demoted to the tail of the field.
"I knew when I was coming out of the pit stall and the 11 (Hamlin) was pulling out with me, I either beat him to that line or lose the race," said Keselowski, twice a runner-up in the annual All-Star Race. "The penalty was I was three-tenths of a mile an hour over the speed limit, but I told my crew chief, I'd rather go down swinging than take a strike and wonder what might have been. I swung, we missed."
After a quick debrief, Wolfe shrugged off the penalty as a simple miscue, one he hoped the team could put behind it entering next Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 (6 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM), NASCAR's longest race.
"Everyone at every position on the team, you've got to get all you can to win these races and I understand that," Wolfe said. "It's frustrating. Would've liked to have a shot from the front row. It's one thing not to come back out with the lead after we came in with the lead, but then to have to go all the way to the rear and not ever have a shot at it, it's frustrating. Just trying to get all you can, and it's a mistake. We all make mistakes and all we can do is try to learn from it, and hopefully we can come back next week and be a little better."
A large part of Keselowski's motivation was to gather the all-important clean air out front, a precious commodity at an especially finicky track under the current NASCAR rules setup. Keselowski said the aero package could be less of a factor in next week's 600-miler, a race known for its long green-flag stretches. But on Saturday night in a segmented All-Star show, clean air was the ultimate trump card, possibly one worth speeding for.
"Whoever gets the clean air with this format and this rules package is going to drive away," Keselowski said. "We've seen that the last three years and with this particular car, it's probably even more so. I thought the 4 (Harvick) and 41 (Busch) were probably two or three tenths faster than everybody, but without clean air, it doesn't matter."