SPRINT CUP SERIES
GOOD SAM RV INSURANCE 500 Aug. 7, 2011 • Long Pond, Pa. • 200 Laps
RACE 21 TIME OF RACE: 3:37:35 • AVERAGE SPEED: 137.878 mph • MARGIN OF VICTORY: 0.791 second • POLE: Joey Logano, 172.055 mph • LEAD CHANGES: 23 among 10 drivers Hurts So Good Keselowski Toughs Out Pocono Win
BRAD KESELOWSKI didn’t let a broken ankle keep him from winning the Good Sam RV Insurance 500 at Pocono Raceway. Keselowski, who injured his
ankle in a testing accident just four days before the race, out-dueled Kyle Busch on a late-race restart to win his third career Sprint Cup race. T e win, his second of the
season, moved Keselowski to 18th in the point standings and made him the leader in NASCAR’s wild-card race. “I came here to win,” said
Keselowski after the race, which included a rain delay of one hour, 40 minutes. “When you let the pain get into your head that far that you don’t believe you can win anymore, you’ll never win.” Helping Keselowski cope with
the pain was the thought of the 30 U.S. troops killed the day before the race in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. “It was inspirational for me,” he said. “Whenever I got in the
car and felt like ‘this hurts, I don’t want to do this, I want to get out,’ that was good inspiration on what it means to man up and make it happen.” T e No. 2 Penske Racing team
had to gamble to get into position to win.
going to go back green. “I know it’s going to take calls
like that to get us in the Chase, and we’ve got cars that are fast enough now to race in the Chase.” T e pit call put Keselowski in
a position to win. But teammate Kurt Busch passed him for the lead
“It was inspirational for me.” —BRAD KESELOWSKI As the skies darkened and the
clouds thickened, crew chief Paul Wolfe called Keselowski, who was running eighth, into the pits on lap 122. T e caution fl ag fl ew on lap 124
for rain, and out came the red fl ag. When the race restarted on lap
131, the leaders pitted for service and Keselowski moved to the point. “I think there’s always a risk in
any call like that,” Wolfe said. “My engineers, they seemed like they were pretty confi dent that we were
on lap 132, and Kyle Busch later dropped Keselowski to third. Kyle Busch got around his
brother for the lead on lap 163, but the caution came out on lap 181 when Kasey Kahne and Juan Pablo Montoya got together in Turn 1. Kyle Busch chose the low
line on the lap-185 restart, but Keselowski beat Busch on the outside and took a lead he would never relinquish. Kyle and Kurt Busch fi nished second and third, respectively,
and Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman rounded out the top fi ve. “Strategy didn’t win us the race,
but it gave us the opportunity to win it, and we were able to win it on our own merits from there,” Keselowski said. T e 27-year-old had already
been to victory lane once this season, but scoring the fuel-mileage win at Kansas Speedway left unfi nished business on the table. He took care of that at Pocono. “T is was an ‘earn it’ weekend,”
Keselowski said. “I’ve always wanted to win a Cup race and earn it. Not fuel mileage, not Talladega. A real win. Today feels like it’s that.” T e win also boosted
Keselowski’s chances of making the Chase. “I think winning two races
is probably really good for our Chase hopes, gives us pretty high odds if we were playing poker, but nothing is 100 percent until it’s 100 percent,” he said.
—JON GUNN
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Photo: Chuck Yadmark
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