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By Reid Spencer – NASCAR Wire Service

LAS VEGAS – Overcoming a pit road speeding penalty with daring late-race strategy, Brad Keselowski broke a 33-race drought with a victory in Sunday’s Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Brad Keselowski, driver of the #2 Miller Lite Ford, celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 6, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Brian Lawdermilk/NASCAR via Getty Images

Keselowski passed Las Vegas native Kyle Busch with five laps left to win for the first time since the fifth race of 2015 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. The 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion beat Team Penske shopmate Joey Logano to the finish line by .675 seconds, as Busch lost ground over the closing laps.

Rain delayed the start of the race, and high winds and a late-race dust storm made visibility a challenge, but the bizarre conditions left Keselowski undeterred. Nor did a pit road speeding penalty under caution on Lap 180 prove catastrophic, thanks to a series of astute pit calls by crew chief Paul Wolfe.

“This is really, really great,” said Keselowski, who lauded the lower-downforce aerodynamic package in place for the 2016 season. “It seemed like there were plenty of challenges, whether it was pit road or the weather or cautions.

Brad Keselowski, driver of the #2 Miller Lite Ford, crosses the finish line to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 6, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Sean Gardner/NASCAR via Getty Images)

“They threw everything they had at us today but this Miller Lite Ford team was too strong, and we were able to fight them off and get to Victory Lane.”

Relative to the field, Keselowski picked up speed toward the end of a run with a car that was eminently maneuverable. Busch’s car took off early but couldn’t maintain its pace late in a fuel run.

“He (Busch) had a really good short-run car, but it fell off on the long run,” Keselowski said. “That’s part of this new package. Some are good on short runs and some are good on long runs, and we had a really good long-run car today.”

Six-time series champion Jimmie Johnson beat Busch to the finish line by .016 seconds to secure third place. Austin Dillon ran fifth, and rookie Ryan Blaney came home sixth, posting a career-best finish on an open-motor race track.

Brad Keselowski, driver of the #2 Miller Lite Ford, celebrates with a burnout after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 6, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images)

The victory was Keselowski’s second at Las Vegas and the 18th of his career, but it wouldn’t have been possible if Wolfe hadn’t elected to keep the No. 2 Ford on the track on Lap 217 when all but Keselowski, Logano and Dillon pitted for tires and fuel under the fifth caution of the race.

It took 38 laps, however, for the benefits of the strategy to become apparent — thanks to Busch’s remarkable restart on Lap 224. From the sixth position, Busch powered his No. 18 Toyota to the outside of Johnson’s Chevrolet, picked up huge momentum off the second corner, dived to the inside and shot past both Logano and Keselowski entering Turn 3.

One lap later, a multi-car wreck in Turn 1 ended strong runs by Matt Kenseth and rookie Chase Elliott, but the seven laps run under the resulting sixth and final caution enabled Keselowski, Logano and Dillon to stretch their fuel supplies to the end of the race.

Brad Keselowski, driver of the #2 Miller Lite Ford, celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 6, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Brian Lawdermilk/NASCAR via Getty Images

Busch streaked away on the Lap 233 restart but developed a pronounced vibration in the right front of this car, and the chase group of Keselowski, Logano and Johnson closed in. Keselowski passed Logano for the second spot on Lap 259 of 267 and steaked past Busch three laps later.

“I tried to hold him off as long as I could, but he showed how fast he was getting by me and Kyle and checking out,” Logano said after the 1-2 finish. “Congratulations to Team Penske. It’s something to be very proud of for our team.

“We have a lot of second-place finishes already this year. I know we’re only three races in, but I’m getting antsy. We have good speed in our cars — we’ll be all right.”

The call to stay out on Lap 217 proved decisive for the Penske Fords, but the decision to sacrifice track position for four tires on Lap 199 (when most others opted for right sides only), made the strategy possible.

“The way I look at it, if you’re going to do two tires, you got to get that clean air,” Wolfe said. “Otherwise, we’ll take four all day long. It gives you opportunities at the end to do some different strategies to get that track position back.

“Obviously we knew when the caution fell there, we were still short on fuel. At that point it was worth the risk to take the gamble and hope for the cautions. Obviously, we got those and were able to get to Victory Lane.”

Busch retained the top spot in the series standings and leads Johnson by six points and seventh-place finisher Kevin Harvick by seven. Logano is fourth, 12 points back.

Here is what several drivers had to say after the race.

Joey Logano (2^nd) – “Brad was able to beat me in the bottom of three and four and maintaining that turn and being able to drive up underneath guys. Congratulations to Brad and also for Team Penske getting a 1-2 finish. That is what we set out to do every week. I am proud of what we did. Gosh, we finished second so many times, Daytona and qualifying. You are so close and want it so bad but I am so proud of the Pennzoil boys here with everything they did all week. We will go get them next week.”

Jimmie Johnson (3^rd) – “Track position was pretty important.  The series of events leading up to that last restart kind of had us deeper in track position than we needed to be for the win.  We still got a third, which is good, but those top three or four cars were pretty equal.  It was just real hard to get there and get inside of somebody.  I was impressed the No. 2 was able to sit behind the No. 22 that long and finally get by and not wear his stuff out in the process.  But, decent day for us all-in-all.”

Kyle Busch (4^th) – “Huge vibration, I don’t know. I had a vibration when they put the rights on and then it just kept getting worse and worse and there at the end I didn’t know if the tire was coming apart or what the deal was. I was trying to give it everything I had and it just would not turn. It got so tight, that was the tightest we were all day. Ran my track bar up two inches and it didn’t do anything. Definitely something wrong, but can’t say enough about this whole M&M’s Camry team, they did a great job and prepared a good car. We struggled really, really bad all weekend, we were horrible. That’s not at all where we should have finished considering how it started. It was a good day. It wasn’t a win, but we were doing a good job doing what we need to do to keep top-fiving it and the wins will come.”

Austin Dillon (5^th) – “Yeah, I know there at the end I was trying to save a little fuel, but we were really coming on strong.  We killed ourselves today.  To comeback to a fifth, I’m blessed and the good Lord was looking out for us.  The cautions fell right.  We really have to pick it up as a group, me included, on pit road.  It was disappointing because we had such a fast race car.  At one point in time we were way faster than the leader.  We just put ourselves behind.  But, we had a shot there at the end and if we were good enough to win we would have done it.  We have a little more work to do.  I think a win is in the future though.”

Ryan Blaney (6^th) – “This was really satisfying. It was a good day for us. We needed a good finish after last week and it is nice to go out here and we all had fast cars. Congrats to the 2 team, they did a great job coming back from that speeding penalty and made a great call at the end. Good job by them and good job by our team.”

Kevin Harvick (7^th) – “We had a good Jimmy John’s Chevrolet overall,” said crew chief Rodney Childers, who led the No. 4 to victory lane in the Kobalt 400 in March 2015. “Everybody did a good job most of the day. We had a bad pit stop and got us behind and then kind of turned our whole day around from there. Everybody did a good job. We couldn’t come close to making it on fuel there at the end like the No. 2 and No. 22, so we didn’t have any option but to come down and top it off again and put tires on it. We’ve just got to get better. We have given them away the past two weeks and just have to do a better job.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (8^th) – “Yeah, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two. I think that affected all the cars and made the cars much harder to drive. We had a huge wind blowing across the race track up into the wall off of (Turn) 2 and that made it difficult getting down into the bottom of Turn 3. It was a challenge. And you could definitely tell when the gusts were picking up.”

Kurt Busch (9^th) – “We fought hard.  Driver made a couple of mistakes on a restart and speeding on pit road.  We just had to battle, battle, battle and just never got into a good rhythm.  We just felt like we were battling from behind.”

Martin Truex Jr. (11^th) – “We just didn’t have it today. We had some good runs, but at the end of the race the handling of our Furniture Row/Denver Mattress Toyota wasn’t what we needed to bring home a strong top-10 finish. We could have used another caution close to the end. The car wasn’t right and it was sure disappointing to see those other cars get by me. An 11th place finish is nothing to brag about or nothing to get depressed about. It just wasn’t our day. We’ll move on to Phoenix and hopefully be more competitive.”

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (12^th) – “We had a really good Fastenal Ford Fusion. I put my guys behind when I sped on pit road with only 100 to go. That was tough to battle back from and Nick made a great pit call and took the wave around and we ended up catching a caution and we fought back really hard there. I thought we were a 10-12^th place car all day so to come home 12^th after a mistake by me, I am really happy with that. We have to make sure we don’t make those mistakes so we have shots at top-five finishes. If not for that mistake we could have been really good there at the end. All in all I am really happy.”

A.J. Allendinger (14^th) – “Hard fought day.  I’ve been working on getting on pit road.  I thought I got on really good and I will be interested to see the number, just sped a little bit.  That got us behind, but we worked the strategy back to keep trying to get back on the lead lap.  The pit crew was really good today.  Randall (Burnett, crew chief) did a good job.  I couldn’t figure out exactly, I knew I needed the front to turn better; we were just a little free in.  From there just made small adjustments all day.  We made it better each run.  At the end there I thought we were decent, the best we had been all day, just nowhere to go.  We took what could have been a really bad day and really put us way behind to start the year and salvaged a decent day out of it.  Not totally happy, but I think we are making gains.  The car has speed in it, just a little bit off.  Randall and the guys give most of the credit to them because I … it’s just frustrating.  I just got us behind.  I didn’t want to get us behind early in the race.  We weren’t great, but we had gotten the gap to kind of get in that safe zone where we could make our own day out of it and I put us behind.  Randall kept me calm.  Some of those runs weren’t very fun but he kept his head in and made me better.”

Carl Edwards (18^th) – “Our day was okay. I still don’t know exactly what happened. They said Kurt (Busch) drove in four-wide and lost it and lost it? I don’t know what happened. I got hit and it would have been alright I think if I would have stayed out instead of come in and I thought the car was more damaged so I came and had to start in the back. Overall I thought we recovered really well. My guys, for as big of a debacle that was, my ARRIS Camry ran pretty well after it. Just for ARRIS and J5 Tactical and all the guys that were here, I wish we would have got a better finish.”

Danica Patrick (21^st) – “I’m really proud of my Nature’s Bakery team for the changes they made throughout the day and keeping us in our spot today. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of speed. It just seemed like I was carrying an anchor early in the runs. Billy and I are still working with how the car works and how we load each corner of the car. Learning what I like in it. We’re not way off. We just have to find something to get us to the next group. We have to find a couple of tenths. We are making progress. Some of it is behind the scenes more with learning than it is with results at this point. We’ve had three races and made steady improvement through the race with the car and that’s important, because it means my communication and his understanding is good. We’ll keep working. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the finish we wanted today, but we had a steady day and missed the big accident.”

Brian Vickers (36^th) – “That was so disappointing. We had a really good Mobil 1 Chevrolet today. We were great on long runs and getting better on short runs. I really liked the way the finish was shaping up. I guess we’ll never know what would have happened.”

Matt Kenseth (37^th) – “I have no idea, honestly. I went into turn one and I wasn’t really hardly turning yet and just spun out before I had any idea what happened. I don’t know, after that I was just trying to save our DeWalt Toyota and got ran into from behind.”

Photos courtesy of NASCAR and Getty Images.