What we learned after Kentucky: Gas cans and hot grills don't go together
So much of this was all about gas, and not the kind that's often passed after a hearty meal.
Brad Keselowski outlasted his fellow NASCAR Sprint Cup Series competitors when even he thought he was toast.
Others didn't fare nearly as well at Kentucky Speedway, with wrecks in abundance over three days of racing on the newly reconfigured and repaved 1.5-mile track -- and one unfortunate fan losing his ride in a mind-boggling fire that caught everyone by surprise, but mostly the fan.
And after heading into the three NASCAR national touring events facing lots of uncertainty, it all sorted itself out in entertaining fashion.
So with the Quaker State 400 and the two junior series races at Kentucky now in NASCAR's rear-view mirror, let's look back at six things we learned last weekend.
6. BABY BYRON IS A BIG DEAL -- The racing "weekend" at Kentucky actually got off to a rousing start on Thursday night when rookie William Byron, who won't turn 19 until November, earned his fourth Camping World Truck Series win of the season.
On a night when his boss at Kyle Busch Motorsports unexpectedly wrecked out early, Byron came through to give KBM its 51st all-time win, the most in series history. Byron also tied his boss man for most wins by a rookie in Truck Series history, and there are another 13 races still left on the 2016 schedule.
5. 'ROWDY' CHECKS ANOTHER BOX -- Kyle Busch has pretty much done it all in his career, checking one career box after another throughout.
But until last Friday night, he had never won an XFINITY Series race at the Kentucky track where he had won twice each in the Cup and Truck Series. He changed that by dominating Friday's race, leading 185 of 201 laps -- including the first 153.
4. TEAM PENSKE IS CATCHING UP -- No question that over the first third of the Sprint Cup season, the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas were the class of the series while winning seven of the first 11 races.
But it has become obvious that the Team Penske Fords are catching up, with Keselowski winning the last two races and a series-high four overall now so far. And despite his worst finish of the year while wrecking out at Kentucky, BK's teammate Joey Logano won the non-points All-Star Race and then again just a few weeks later at Michigan.
3. REPAVES ARE ALWAYS UNPREDICTABLE -- The only thing that could be accurately predicted about the Kentucky races were that they were going to be unpredictable after the reconfiguration and repave.
And that proved to be the case.
There were lots of wrecks, particularly in the Truck Series and Sprint Cup Series races, with some of the top drivers in the sport (Logano and six-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson among them) encountering a difficult time negotiating the new surface. No one would have predicted both Johnson and Logano would have wrecked out of the Quaker State 400 of their own accord, with no assistance from anyone else.
2. BURNOUTS ARE OVERRATED -- By the time Keselowski reached the final turn of the final lap of the Sprint Cup race, he was out of gas and he knew it. Carl Edwards was closing fast and Keselowski did not have a good feeling at all about how it was going to turn out. But he stayed calm.
"It's a pretty helpless feeling being out of gas and seeing guys behind you running you down, and knowing that you're not at full speed," Keselowski said. "There's nothing you can do about it and freaking out ain't going to help anything. I can tell you that. That just makes it worse. I guess that's the way I look at it and approach it."
It got him to Victory Lane, but not until after he got a push from a track emergency vehicle. "I felt terrible that I couldn't do a burnout for the fans," Keselowski said. "But I didn't have a drop of gas left."
1. GAS HAS ITS PLACE -- And it's not in the back of a pickup truck, next to a grill that's still hot after hours of tailgating.
That apparently is what caused an alarming fire in a truck in the parking lot while Saturday night's Quaker State 400 was underway. Amazingly, a fan who had been sleeping inside the truck was removed with the assistance of track emergency workers who also doused the fire quickly and no one was hurt.
