QUIKTRIP FOLDS OF HONOR 500

The 2015 season didn’t get off to the start Brad Keselowski envisioned, as the first race of the year ended in a DNF at Daytona. But with another week comes another opportunity, and the 2 Crew is ready to move on with the QuikTrip Folds of Honor 500 at Atlanta on Sunday.

Brad was running third late in last week’s Daytona 500, when a rare blown engine in the Deuce ended his day. It was just the second time the Team Penske machine had lost an engine during a race since BK took over the No. 2 in 2011.

Coincidentally, the series now shifts to the location of that other engine failure, Atlanta Motor Speedway, where Kes and crew have had some tough luck in recent years. That blown engine occurred in 2013 with the Deuce running out in front at Atlanta and cost Brad a shot at the win. Then last season, Brad again had the No. 2 Ford Fusion running strong near the front at AMS when he was caught up in a late wreck, giving him his only DNF of last season. But despite their annual struggles at Atlanta and last week’s setback at Daytona, BK and the No. 2 crew are ready to leave those rough results in the past and focus on winning this weekend.

“I am ready to race. We ran well here at Atlanta last year and I feel as though we have a good baseline package.” Brad said. “It is going to be nice to get a few hours of testing in prior to the actual start of the weekend. The Detroit Genuine Parts Ford crew is off to a strong start and we are looking forward to getting our “regular season” started after a rough Daytona.”

Brad looks to gain ground and climb the leaderboard at a track where, if it were not for poor luck in his last two races, he would most certainly be averaging a top-10 finish. Outside of those two rough finishes, which mired him in 35th and 39th place results the last two seasons at Atlanta, Kes has traditionally been strong at the 1.54-mile Hampton, Ga. track.

In six total Sprint Cup races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, BK has two top-10 finishes, including a third-place finish in 2012 on the way to his Sprint Cup Championship. One year earlier, he finished sixth after starting in P14.

Last August, Brad qualified well, started second and ran near the front of the pack all day in the Oral-B USA 500 at AMS. He did make a mistake on pit road, overshooting his pit stall, but he worked through it and fought his way back to the top five. However, with less than 30 laps remaining, he got caught behind an indecisive Denny Hamlin, who cut his No. 11 in front of Josh Wise in the lapped No. 98 car to get to pit road. This forced Wise to check up, causing Brad to make critical contact with the No. 98 car, effectively ending his day.

He’ll hope for some better luck as he takes the No. 2 Detroit Genuine Parts Ford Fusion into the second event of the season. His Penske teammate Joey Logano had that good luck last week in Daytona, and rode it to a season-opening win in the Daytona 500 that has all but already secured Logano’s place in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Conditions have certainly been cooler this weekend than teams are accustomed to at the track nicknamed “Hotlanta.” This season marks the first time since the Cup Series cut from two visits to Atlanta down to one in 2011 that AMS has hosted a race this early in the season. Since the move to one race at Atlanta, that race has always been contested in the sweltering late summer. Previous to that change, AMS had hosted the fourth race of the year for several years, but never has Atlanta Motor Speedway held the second race of the season before.

Perhaps that explains some of the hijinks and strange happenings at the track over the course of this past weekend. First there was the case of the stolen cup car, when the unmarked trailer containing Travis Kvapil’s No. 44 car was taken from a hotel parking lot. The incident forced Kvapil and Team Extreme Racing to withdraw from the event. (the car was later found abandoned in the woods). Then on Friday, inspection issues forced 14 teams, including the No. 48, No. 24, No. 20 and No. 14 to miss qualifying for Sunday’s QuikTrip Folds of Honor 500.

Things calmed down a bit on Saturday, but the day wasn’t without some controversy. In a morning qualifying session, Brad was initially ruled to have won the pole for Saturday’s Camping World Truck Series Hyundai Construction Equipment 200 at AMS. But after tape of qualifying was reviewed by NASCAR, BK’s No. 29 Cooper Standard Ford F-150 was ruled to have crossed the start/finish line to start his pole-winning lap just seconds after the session ended, and the lap was disallowed. Of course, keeping with the strange circumstances of the weekend, BK found out about the disqualification while on the air for FOX Sports, making his debut as a guest analyst for the XFINITY Series Race. Later on Saturday, BK went on to start the NCWTS race from 10th in his Team BKR No. 29 truck, and finished 15th.

But while things have been going haywire elsewhere, the Team Penske Cup machines have been getting better throughout the weekend, which should make for a strong finish to the weekend on Sunday in Atlanta as both Brad and Logano seek to become just the fourth Team Penske Driver to take the checkered flag in Atlanta since Penske started competing there in 1972.

The weekend started slow with testing at Atlanta on Thursday, where the No. 2 was 22nd fastest in the first session and 21st in the second test session, Kes’ best time was a 29.806-second trip around AMS at an average speed of just over 186 MPH. But after some adjustments to the Black and Blue Detroit Genuine Parts Ford Fusion, the Deuce had even more speed in came out of Friday’s lone eighth-fastest with a time of 28.901 seconds at an average speed of 191.827 MPH.

BK went on to reach the final round of knockout qualifying at Atlanta, but finished 12th with a time of 28.965 seconds at at 191.403 miles per hour. He’ll start Sunday’s race from Row 6. Meanwhile, teammate Joey Logano remained red-hot and drove the No. 22 to the pole. Brad was 26th in Happy Hour final practice on Sunday at 29.907 seconds and 185.375 mph, but he enters Sunday’s race with his eyes fixed on earning his first win at Atlanta in the Cup series, and the knowledge that the speed exists in the Penske program to get him there.

Coverage of the QuikTrip Folds of Honor 500 begins at 12:30 p.m. ET Sunday on FOX with the green flag slated to fly at 1:16 p.m. ET