{"id":23910,"date":"2019-03-01T19:40:04","date_gmt":"2019-03-02T01:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=23910"},"modified":"2019-03-02T16:02:36","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T22:02:36","slug":"keselowski-hopes-to-add-another-win-in-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/01\/keselowski-hopes-to-add-another-win-in-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"Keselowski hopes to add another win in Vegas"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

For more reasons than you think, Brad Keselowski<\/strong> seems especially satisfied to have won early in the 2019 season. His victory last week in the second race of the schedule \u2013 at Atlanta \u2013 all but insures a place in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> Playoffs this Fall.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Brad Keselowski, driver of the #2 Autotrader Ford, celebrates in victory lane after winning the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on February 24, 2019 in Hampton, Georgia. (Photo by Brian Lawdermilk\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

The win also takes a little stress off his Team Penske organization as it \u2013 along with the rest of the field \u2013 figures out a new technical package for this season\u2019s Cup cars. In Sunday\u2019s Pennzoil 400 (3:30 p.m. ET<\/a>, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Las Vegas Motor Speedway the cars will not only run a reduced horsepower package, but will have special aero ducts installed in the front of the car \u2013 both creating competitive challenges for drivers and teams.<\/p>\n

The idea is to create closer racing similar to the package used in last year\u2019s All-Star Race on the 1.5-mile Charlotte Motor Speedway \u2013 an event that created record lead changes and earned rave reviews.<\/p>\n

Most of the drivers conceded during Friday practice sessions that there were no sure-bets in Vegas this weekend. It\u2019s a learning process and with a victory already in Keselowski\u2019s pocket, it will be easier to gamble.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a car that\u2019s locked in, you can kinda throw some bones at them,\u2019\u2019 Keselowski explained of the victory-luxury. \u201cIf it works? Good. If it doesn\u2019t? Ehhhh.,\u2019\u2019 he said smiling. \u201cThen it seems like it kinda flips right before the playoffs start.\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing Keselowski concedes he\u2019d like his No. 2 Team Penske Ford crew to focus more on is qualifying. This week it could play an especially important role in collecting early race stage points \u2013 something he didn\u2019t do last week despite his victory. He started 19th at Atlanta and 35th in the season-opening Daytona 500.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy not qualifying well last week, probably cost our team a lot of stage points,\u2019\u2019 Keselowski said. \u201cWe won the race and only scored the fifth or sixth most points because of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we had scored some stage points, we\u2019d be leading the points right now. That stinks. I want to qualify well and get some stage points and that really starts with Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, that he was hopeful that being a part of the offseason test session at Vegas would be helpful to that end.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased off the test if you\u2019re really fast in qualifying you\u2019ll be really fast here leading in the race but if you lose track position you\u2019ll never get it back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really have no idea what to expect in qualifying. Part of me thinks the 3 (Austin Dillon) and 8 car (Daniel Hemric) will pull away and sit on the pole. Part of me thinks we\u2019ll see a 10-car drafting pack and part of me things we\u2019ll see cars sit on pit road until time expires. I really don\u2019t know what to expect, if I\u2019m being honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, he noted, \u201cThe stages for this kind of rule settings have a bigger effect than before because the strategy will be even more mixed, it\u2019ll be hard to keep track position so you\u2019ll do things to win the stage that might bury you for the next stage. … it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has certainly played out well historically-speaking for Keselowski at Las Vegas. His three wins here are second only to Jimmie Johnson\u2019s four victories among active drivers. Keselowski has won three times in the last six races at the 1.5-mile track, an unmatched mark of late. His worst finish in the last seven Vegas races is seventh \u2013 in 2015. He\u2019s either won the pole position or won the race in five of the last seven races<\/p>\n

And with a playoff berth all but assured already, only two races into the season, Keselowski is feeling ready to gamble. He certainly has had the field covered at Las Vegas and says he really feels like the season settles in after the series returns from the western swing of Vegas, Phoenix (next week) and then Auto Club Speedway in California in two weeks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI put Kansas as a big marker,\u2019\u2019 Keselowski said of judging championship progress. \u201cWe\u2019re out here on the West Coast and the teams don\u2019t really get a good chance to innovate on the cars and kind of re-do them. But by the time we get through Texas (March 31<\/a>) and get to Kansas (May 3<\/a>), generally we see the field kind of settle in to where it\u2019s going to be and I\u2019d expect that to be the case with the way the schedule plays out this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service For more reasons than you think, Brad Keselowski seems especially satisfied to have won early in the 2019 season. His victory last week in the second race of the schedule \u2013 at Atlanta \u2013 all but insures a place in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs this Fall. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":23680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[79,67,16],"class_list":["post-23910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-brad-keselowski","tag-las-vegas-motor-speedway","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/MENCS_AMS_Keselowski_VL_022419-e1551054054248.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-6dE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23910"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23917,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23910\/revisions\/23917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}