QUIKTRIP FOLDS OF HONOR 500

Brad Keselowski didn’t come away a winner at Atlanta Motor Speedway, but he came away looking prophetic.

Just before making his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start of the season, BK penned a blog about his thoughts on his Brad Keselowski Racing truck team, and in it, he talked about just how difficult it is to recover from even one mistake during the short NCWTS races.

And unfortunately, all it took was one mistake on pit road, and BK was doomed to a lap-down 15th-place finish. Despite the result, Brad came away happy with the way his team performed and the way it built a truck capable of winning.

“We had a really fast Cooper Standard Ford F-150 all weekend,” Brad said. “Chad Kendrick and everyone at BKR did a great job.  This is the first truck we’ve taken to the racetrack using our own in house body program and I was proud of how much speed we had.  The breaks just didn’t go our way in the race but I’m confident our group will bounce back strong at Martinsville.”

The adversity began early and stayed around for Kes, as he piloted his No. 29 Cooper Standard Ford F-150 for the first time this year.

His final qualifying lap was the fastest in the field, earning him the pole award and the top spot for the Hyundai Construction Equipment 200. However, NASCAR reviewed his pole-winning run and determined that he hadn’t started his lap before the time was up in the final round of time trials—dropping him back to P10 for Saturday night’s green flag.

The speed Brad spoke of quickly showed, as he moved to second place before the first caution flag flew at lap 18. With just 130 laps, this stop was sure to set the stage for the rest of the race, and BK made the strategic call to stay out and inherit the lead.

He fended off the rest of the field on fresh tires for six laps before yielding the top spot to Erik Jones on lap 25. By lap 38, he had fallen all the way to 10th place, forcing him to pit under green at lap 40.

The No. 29 crew put Brad back out on fresh rubber and down one lap, but a miscue by Kes on pit road put him in an even bigger hole. While driving through the empty pit lane, he drove through too many pit boxes, and he was penalized by NASCAR. After being forced to drive back down pit road, he was trailing by two laps.

If it weren’t for the penalty, the pit decision just might have paid off. A caution flag flew at lap 51, and Kes took the wave around to get one lap back.

From then on, he just held strong and prayed for a caution. He would’ve been left with one extra set of fresh tires and could’ve used them to make one late charge.

“We talked before the race that if a caution came out before lap 20 I was going to leave it in Brad’s hands,” said crew chief Chad Kendrick. “It was a tough call and I had a feeling it was coming. When the leader was pitting I would have wanted to bring him in too but Brad decided to stay out and I was good with it. Brad has more experience in these situations. Then with the pit road penalty it just put us behind the whole race and we could not make it up. If we could have just caught a caution at the end we still had a set of stickers and nobody else did. We were one caution away.”

Unfortunately, that caution never came, and Brad crossed the line in position 15, still one lap down. The result broke a string of thee consecutive top-five finishes for Brad in the Truck Series.