An Early End at Dover

When it rains, it pours — and Brad Keselowski and the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion team have been soaked with misfortune throughout this season.

At the AAA 400 at Dover International Speedway, the issue was a damaged rear-end housing that sent BK to the garage near the race’s midway point, resulting in a 37th-place finish.

“We still aren’t exactly sure what happened, but something in the rear end housing went out and it burned up,” Brad explained. “We leaked oil on the track, so we figured we would come in before we ruined everybody else’s day.”

This latest issue was once again disheartening, given the speed the Blue Deuce showed all weekend.

Brad was one of the fastest drivers through the practices at the “Monster Mile.” He posted the No. 6 qualifying time and was faster than any competitor during the final practice Saturday afternoon.

Crew members saw a small warning sign of an issue in the Blue Deuce, though there was nothing that could really be done to prevent further damage.

Twenty-four hours after that blazing practice, the Blue Deuce wasn’t quite the same early in the race, as BK radioed that he was loose entering and exiting the high-banked corners at Dover.

He still maintained his sixth position through a long green-flag run early. After the first caution on lap 37, crew chief Paul Wolfe called for a four-tire stop, which lost the No. 2 a bit of track position behind a number of competitors who took only right-side tires.

As a result, BK restarted from 13th at the lap 43 restart. Despite still being loose around the Dover oval, Brad turned in some of the race’s best lap times as he dueled with Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards on his way to eighth place.

At the race’s 100-lap mark, he was running eighth, just ahead of fellow Ford drivers Edwards and Joey Logano.

BK’s Penske Racing teammate Logano ended up in third, but fate had something different in store for Brad. While running just outside the Top 10 at lap 222, he reported smoke in the driver’s compartment, prompting Wolfe to call him in to the garage.

After the race, Kes commented that the crew members saw a small warning sign of an issue in the Blue Deuce, though there was nothing that could really be done to prevent further damage.

“We definitely weren’t going to finish the race like that,” BK said. “It’s just one of those deals. We had a little bit of warning but not much. The crew guys noticed a lot of oil in the wheel well after pulling the tires off under one of the pit stops.”

After his team fixed the issue in the garage, BK went back onto the track at lap 266. However, after losing so many laps, there was little he could do to gain back his positioning.

With the frustrating 37th-place finish, Brad picked up just seven points and fell to 15th in the Sprint Cup standings behind Jamie McMurray.

With just seven races remaining in the season, BK is hoping that he and his team can exorcise all of their bad luck and prepare for another championship run in 2014.

“It was unfortunate because we had a pretty good Miller Lite Ford Fusion,” Brad said. “It’s better to go ahead and get all the bad luck out of the way now since we aren’t in the Chase. Look out next year.”

NEXT UP

The NSCS will head to Kansas this week for the Hollywood Casino 400.

BK will head to Kansas after two straight Top 10 finishes at the track. He finished sixth at Kansas Speedway earlier in the season and came in eighth in this Chase race last season.

Brad also had great NSCS success at Kansas in 2011, when he finished third in the Chase event and won the spring race at the Midwestern track.

He will look to duplicate that success when the Hollywood Casino 400 goes green at 1 p.m. EDT Sunday.