Since its inception on the Monster Energy Cup schedule in 2011, Kentucky Speedway has been one of the kindest tracks to Brad Keselowski, and he hopes to take his fourth trip to Victory Lane in Saturday night’s Quaker State 400.
Of the six MENCS races run at the 1.5-mile tri-oval, five have resulted in Top 10s for the No. 2 Miller Lite Ford Fusion team, including three wins. The third came just last year on the newly repaved asphalt surface in Sparta, Ky., and BK took an important lesson in that victory: save fuel.
“I definitely didn’t want to see them change the track, but I appreciate the position that Marcus Smith and everybody at SMI was in with issues like the weepers,” Kes says. “Those are always hard to fix without just going through and redoing the whole track. I really liked it as a bumpy race track. I thought that was something that was unique and I adapted well to, but, of course, no one wants to sit and wait for the track to dry when it has weepers, so I understood that part.”
Using a fast Miller Lite Ford to claim the lead late in the going, Kes was able to pull away from his competitors—before realizing he had to back it down and save fuel to make it to the finish. With a lap remaining, the fuel cell ran dry, forcing crew chief Paul Wolfe to tell BK he needs to flip the reserve switch. Once flipped, the Michigan driver had exactly one lap left, and he made the most of it, holding off Carl Edwards en route to the checkers. He ran so low on fuel that he couldn’t even do a proper burnout.
“I feel terrible for the fans. I didn’t get to do a burnout. Had no gas—the car wouldn’t run,” Brad said. “But we’re back here in Victory Lane. Great Saturday night. I don’t know if I’ve ever had that happen and I don’t want it to happen ever again—I’d rather drive it into Victory Lane. You take ’em any way you can get ’em.”
His first KYS win in 2012 came under similar circumstances, just barely making the distance on fuel, but the win two years later in 2014 couldn’t have been further from a fuel-saver. Kes dominated the race by leading 199 of 267 laps while Team Penske teammate Joey Logano led another 37, leaving only 31 to the field]. BK started on the Coors Light Pole with the track record, and he sealed the deal on race night.
Typically not as strong at recently repaved facilities, the 2016 win stunned even the 2 Crew, with veteran spotter Joey Meier shouting “It’s a repave!” as Brad crossed the stripe. But unlike the recent resurfaces at Daytona, Pocono, and Michigan, Kentucky’s aged tarmac wasn’t just given a once over, the track was reconfigured.
“One of the interesting things that I’ve really appreciate about the repave is that when they repaved it they changed one and two dramatically,” BK said. “One and two kind of feels more like almost like Kansas. It’s really fast. In the XFINITY cars, we can run wide-open through that corner, and we weren’t even close to that before. I think that end is really fast. This end over here is really slow, treacherous, hard to get a hold of, and so there’s a big discrepancy between the two ends.”
Kentucky Speedway decided to employ the Tire Dragon to their 1.5 mile track in efforts to widen the racing groove and reduce the corner entry calamity from a year ago.
Tune into the Quaker State 400 to see if BK can come out clean and with his fourth Kentucky victory. The race airs live on NBC Sports Network on Saturday, July 8 at 7 p.m. ET.