Brad Keselowski scores Atlanta win after late Kevin Harvick mistake
Brad Keselowski won Sunday's Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway in improbable fashion on a day when it looked like no one was going to be able to touch Kevin Harvick.
Harvick absolutely dominated the race, starting from the pole and leading nearly every lap until a pit-road speeding penalty with 13 laps to go took him from the lead to 35th as the last car on the lead lap.
After Harvick's costly mistake, Kyle Larson inherited the lead in his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Ford -- but he appeared to make his own mistake shortly thereafter, drifting up to take the high line on a day when the bottom seemed to have been working for him. Keselowski got underneath Larson in his No. 2 Team Penske Ford with seven laps to go and never looked back.
"You never know. That’s how these races are," Keselowski said. "We had a lot of adversity today, there’s no doubt about that.
"These races aren’t easy. They’re 500 miles and a lot can happen and when you think you’ve got it, they slip away. I know how it goes. This one kind of fell in our lap at the end and my team put it all together when it counted."
It was the fifth time in last six years Harvick has led the most laps at Atlanta -- and each time he has failed to win.
"This place, for whatever reason, I just feel like I’m snake-bitten," Harvick said. "It’s my own doing today. I really didn’t think I was even close on pit lane. It gets to bouncing around, I thought I was being conservative, apparently I wasn’t. ... I was just pushing it too hard."
The only time Harvick lost the lead all day until his unfathomable pit-road gaffe came during a mid-race pit cycle when Keselowski grabbed the point for a handful of laps.
But even then, Harvick was lightning fast in his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford once his crew chief, Rodney Childers, had four fresh tires put on it. He was 10 seconds behind Keselowski when he cycled back onto the track at one point, and it took him just 10 laps to run Keselowski down and retake the lead.
Harvick started from the pole and led 293 of the first 312 laps.
He appeared to be running away with the day until a battery issue for Austin Dillon brought out a rare caution with 16 laps remaining and set up a restart that at least gave some of Harvick's competitors one last shot at him.
After a round of pit stops, Harvick was lining up as the apparent leader on the inside of the front row for the ensuing restart, with Larson on his outside. Matt Kenseth lined up behind Harvick on the inside of Row 2, with Keselowski on the outside.
Then word came from the NASCAR control tower that Harvick had been too fast entering pit road, sending him to the end of the longest line -- which put him in 35th with just 13 laps to go. He drove like a madman to get up to ninth by the end of the race, but did not have nearly enough time to make up all the lost ground.
That left the spoils of the day to Keselowski after Larson could not hold off the Team Penske driver.
"They gave me a great Autotrader Ford Fusion and we were able to get by Kyle there at the end," Keselowski said. "I knew that he wasn’t going to be easy to pass. His car was great and I was able to make the right moves to get by him.”
Keselowski had issues of his own on pit road earlier in the day, giving up 13 positions at one point when his No. 2 team failed to get all lug nuts on his tires. He gained all of those spots back over the last 58 laps to get to the front by the end, where he could take advantage of Harvick's incomprehensible mistake.
"I just made a mistake that I preach all the time that you don’t need to make. And then you go go out and make it yourself instead of following all the things you preach," Harvick said. "That part of it is hard for me to swallow."
