BK 2014 Top 10: No. 1

Brad Keselowski’s 2014 campaign was one to remember in all three NASCAR series. So over the course of the offseason, we’re going to countdown the Top 10 best moments from one of the most successful seasons in BK’s racing career.

Topping the list is one of the most incredible clutch victories of Brad’s career—a downright fearless charge to victory with his back against the wall at one of NASCAR’s most iconic venues.

No. 1: Oct. 19, 2014
Talladega Triumph

It was the final race of the Contender Round in NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup and the worst fears of Brad Keselowski and the No. 2 crew had been realized.

Before the Chase began, Brad predicted that the Contender Round, featuring races at Kansas and Charlotte before the finale at the always-unpredictable Talladega Superspeedway, would be the most treacherous of the championship. And after 36th- and 16th-place finishes in the first two races, BK was left with no other option: He needed a win in the final restrictor plate event of the year to keep his title hopes alive.

But Brad rose to the challenge and not only did he race his No. 2 Redd’s Wicked Apple Ale Ford Fusion to victory—he did so in perhaps the most dramatic finish of the entire season.

Kes sustained damage to the Redd Deuce early in the race, was kicked back to the middle of the pack in the final 10 laps and had to go through two green-white-checkered finishes—but at the end of a wild day at one of the most iconic tracks in motorsports, Brad took the checkered flag and kept his season alive.

“I can’t believe it,” Brad said immediately after his victory. “Talladega is such a wild card, and to be able to win here (where) you have to catch breaks and make your own breaks, a little of both. I can’t believe we won at Talladega.”

Adding to the drama, the win came just one week after BK was at the center of a post-race incident involving Denny Hamlin, Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth. But with his season on the line, Brad shut everything out and won at a track where victory can be frustratingly elusive for even the best drivers.

“I don’t think this is the first time we’ve seen Brad step up to the plate,” said No. 2 crew chief Paul Wolfe. “Seems like everyone is against him. Seems like that fires him up more. I’ve got his back 100%. I didn’t see anything that he did out of line. He does a great job and races hard. That’s why we like him driving our car.”

It was fitting that after being vilified by his fellow competitors, Kes climbed into a new black-and-red Redd’s Wicked paint scheme as he fixed his sights on Victory Lane. But that trek was not without plenty of adversity, starting at the outset of the race. The No. 2 team elected to replace the alternator on the mean Redd’s machine just before the green flag, forcing Brad to start from P38. But it was no matter, and just 20 laps into the race, BK had already cracked the top five.

At the front of the pack, Brad dueled with two other championship hopefuls—Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson—who were in the same position as he was, in need of a win to keep their title hopes alive.

The Deuce won out in the first battle between the desperate drivers when he jumped to the outside line and rocketed ahead of Dale Jr. to the lead on Lap 25. Over the course of the day, the No. 2 car held lead on five separate occasions but, as is often the case at a restrictor plate tracks, with the lead changing hands often, BK only held the top spot for 12 total laps in the race.

The first stroke of in-race adversity came at lap 58, when Brad was running near the front of the pack alongside Jamie McMurray. McMurray blew a tire on his No. 1 car and spun out in front of Earnhardt Jr. In an attempt to avoid a total spin, McMurray then cut to the left and smacked into the right side of Brad’s No. 2.

Fortunately, the damage was manageable for the 2 Crew. After a season filled with similar adversity, Wolfe and Co. were prepared, and it took them just two trips down pit road to get the Wicked Deuce repaired and because of their quick work, they miraculously kept the No. 2 on the lead lap.

“We certainly didn’t just get handed this race today. We had the incident early in the race where I think the 1 car blew a tire out,” Brad said. “He half-spun and kind of got in our door and tore that up. It was a pretty hard hit. I thought the car was torn up pretty good, but I still haven’t seen it but Paul says it was good. We maybe lost just a touch of speed, but not enough to overcome the will to win that we had today. From there it was about finding the track position, making the right moves, finding the right lanes and I thought we were in good shape having run top five, top 10 most of the race.”

After the caution caused by the incident with McMurray, the field stayed clean for awhile, creating a long green-flag run that allowed Brad to meet up with Penske teammate Ryan Blaney and draft to the front of the pack. Eventually, Kes came back down pit road—and this stop came at the perfect time. While he was on pit road, a massive wreck involving another Chase hopeful, Kyle Busch, took place.

Another yellow followed not long after, when Michael McDowell blew a tire, and that pause set up the most thrilling green-flag spell of the race.

Johnson took the restart in P1 with Brad beside him in second. After the green flag dropped, several top-flight drivers, including Kevin Harvick, Dale Jr., Kurt Busch and Martin Truex Jr. all made moves at the 48—only to be denied. After Truex’s attempt, Kes pushed the Deuce past the No. 78 and made his own pass at Johnson. But like others before him, he didn’t get the drafting help he needed and was shuffled back. Finally, one more competitor charged at the No. 48 and where Brad and others came short, Danica Patrick and the No. 10 succeeded and passed the six-time champion for the lead.

With 15 laps to go, Brad came down pit road for his final trip, an in-and-out, fuel only stop. But unlike his previous stop, this trip came at the wrong time. Before the green-flag stops cycled through, a caution flag flew, shuffling the Deuce back to P21 behind several drivers who had not yet pitted.

In that moment, the No. 2 crew’s season was on life support, and Brad could be pardoned for feeling briefly like it was about to come to an end. But luckily he found some help just when he needed it from his teammates, the young Blaney — who Brad gave his first NASCAR opportunity in his Brad Keselowski Racing truck in the Camping World Truck Series — and the veteran Logano, who had already booked his spot in the next round of the playoffs.

“That felt like a death sentence in itself, but we kept our composure,” Brad said of the unlucky timing of his pit stop. “I worked really well with my teammates Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney. We made kind of the perfect move together to go from 16th to second in three or four laps. That put us in position to really capitalize on the last two yellows.”

On a restart with nine laps to go, the field fanned out and Brad created his own outside line, where he was deftly followed by Blaney and Logano. That trio also received some unexpected help from Johnson, who joined their line and rocketed to the front. With just six laps left, the No. 2 was in P2.

Two laps later, another caution flag flew and that set up one of the most dramatic finishes of the season, a green-white-checkered dash to the next round. On the first attempt at a GWC finish, Brad took P1 from fellow Chaser Ryan Newman and set his sights on the checkered flag. But before the white flag could fly, Earnhardt Jr. wrecked, sparking another GWC attempt.

On the ensuing nerve-wracking restart, Newman edged Brad and took the white flag in P1. Through the final 2.666-mile lap, BK was in full-on desperation mode, slicing up and down the track, looking for someone, anyone to give him the draft he needed to best Newman.

Finally, he found that help from perhaps the most unlikely source, Kenseth—the man with whom he was wrestling between haulers just one week earlier in Charlotte. Through turns three and four, Kenseth’s No. 20 gave Brad’s No. 2 an aero push past Newman and into the lead.

As the two rivals raced through the tri-oval to the checkers, Kenseth looked for a clean route around Brad, but it wasn’t there. Instead, Kenseth finished in P2 and advanced to the next round on points, and with his miraculous victory, Brad lived to fight another day in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

After the race, Brad stood in Victory Lane, still unsure of how he pulled off the tremendous victory at Talladega when only a win would do.

“The approach for today to be completely honest with you is, we knew we had to win the race,” Brad said in an interview with ESPN after the shocking victory. “It’s just (time to) hammer down and make it happen. I’m not really sure how it happened, but it happened and we’re glad to be in victory lane with the Redd’s Wicked Apple Ale Ford Fusion.”

The win was the third of Brad’s career at Talladega, putting him in select company. Only eight drivers in NASCAR history have won three races at Dega, and the only active drivers to do so are BK, Dale Jr. and Jeff Gordon.

The win was also No. 6 on the season for Brad, sealing arguably the best overall season of his career. With six victories, he topped his career-best of five, set during his 2012 championship season. He also won five poles through the year after winning just three his entire career before this season.

His 17 top-fives were also a career-high, and his 20 top-10s trailed just the 23 he tallied in 2012. He led 1,540 laps along the way, just 19 less than the rest of his Cup career combined.

While Brad ultimately fell short of his goal: winning his second Cup title, his win at Talladega capped a fantastic year and proved to the racing world that, no matter the circumstances, the No. 2 driver is always a threat to win.