Keselowski looks for another Talladega bounce

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[May 03, 2016]  By Jonathan Ingram, The Sports Xchange
 
 When Brad Keselowski won his first race at the Talladega Superspeedway in 2009, there was a car wrecking in front of him. On Sunday, half the field wrecked behind him as the Penske Racing driver won his fourth race at the storied Alabama track and his second race of the Sprint Cup season.

Talladega is usually an unforgiving place, but Sunday was the perfect storm.

Actually, the rainstorm did not arrive until long after the race was over despite threatening skies. But the threat of the race ending due to rain had drivers racing aggressively and fighting hard to get to the front throughout the second half of the race.

The box score included three Big Ones, two cars upside down and one almost upside down. Headed to the checkered flag without anybody to dispute his lead, Keselowski didn't get to the finish line before a caution ended the race early as bedlam erupted behind him.

When it was over, Keselowski had nothing but praise for the track that brought less than fond farewells from many other drivers.

"It's great to be back on this podium as a race winner," he said. "Very, very proud and thrilled today. Never know what you're going to get here. Talladega has always been that way. It's always been very good to me. I'm thankful for that."

On a day when reigning Talladega champion Dale Earnhardt Jr., who has six career victories at the track, wrecked twice and several drivers said they were glad to see the track in their rear-view mirrors, Keselowski could be forgiven for liking NASCAR's longest and fastest superspeedway.

In 2009, Keselowski won his first career Sprint Cup victory at the track as Carl Edwards sailed into the catch fence near the start-finish line. Keselowski had made a clean move to pass Edwards, who then wrecked himself trying to block the upstart driver. Before the season was out, Keselowsi had signed to drive for Roger Penske in no small part due to the win at Talladega.

When Keselowski won the Sprint Cup championship driving a Dodge for Penske Racing in 2012, the season included his second springtime victory at Talladega. No wonder he gets pumped when he wins in Alabama.

"Talladega has been a track for us that's been a great catalyst for success," he said. "I don't know why that is. It's a track where if you're capable of winning here, I think you show a certain level of attitude and swagger that carries your way through the rest of the year."

In some ways, Keselowski is making up for lost time. His grandfather John entered a car in Talladega's first strike-torn race in 1969, when Homer Newlands finished 27th in the Kaye Engineering Dodge. His uncle Ron and father John have entered and raced at Talladega in the Sprint Cup and ARCA Series, but have no victories to show for it.

It's never easy winning at Talladega. On Sunday, the Geico 500 -- an ironic title given the company's auto insurance business -- presented a two-part problem. There's often a lot of crashes at Talladega due to the tight confines of the high-speed draft. On this day, two cars lifted off and rolled over after getting hit by another car while spinning. Rookie Chris Buescher was the first, his Ford barrel-rolling down the back straight, seemingly weightless. The "quiet" inside the car with the wheels off the ground was spooky, Buescher said of his first experience with all wheels up.

"I'm ready to go home," he said.

Buescher was the innocent victim of a driver who hit him from behind and then a second driver who launched his Ford. That's the problem for all drivers at Talladega. It's hard to control one's own destiny. Generally, the safest place is at the front. But as Saturday's Xfinity Series race demonstrated, a battle for the lead can get hairy in a hurry. Joey Logano, Keselowski's teammate at Penske Racing, nailed the SAFER barrier instead of the landing in victory lane.

The second flip on Sunday belonged to veteran Matt Kenseth , who went over easy compared to Buescher. His Toyota landed on top of the SAFER barrier on the back straight, before righting itself. Kenseth said he's only been upside down twice before -- both at Talladega. His biggest concern was claustrophobia had the car not returned to its wheels.

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Danica Patrick was involved in the same wreck. Her car caught on fire due to the impact and the foot pedals were deranged. Patrick hustled out of the burning car, joking about it later.

"I have a lot of hair," she said, "and I want to keep it."

Patrick also joked about the chest X-ray she requested because she had pain when breathing.

"My chest," she said, "is still symmetrical."

At one point, Earnhardt's steering wheel disengaged while at speed -- forcing the driver to grab the column briefly with his hand before re-attaching the wheel. It was more comic relief relative to other harrowing incidents.

"That's what you call a power steering problem," was one of Earnhardt's tweets after the in-car camera caught the episode.

Short of knocking down the banking of the Alabama track to slow the cars, the nature of racing at Talladega is not likely to change. Some participants voiced the possibility that NASCAR can do more than the current use of roof flaps, which work well to keep cars on the ground in solo spins. But when cars are hit and launched, the laws of physics tend to take over. There's a limit to what can be done with cars that first and foremost have to be designed to race.

Austin Dillon knows about flyers. After contact, his Chevy flew into the fence last summer at the Daytona International Speedway in a finish-line incident that left the car in tatters.

"I don't know how you'd fix (the problem)," said Dillon, whose damaged car finished third on Sunday after surviving an earlier incident. "I know NASCAR works hard to make the cars safe and that's why all of us are walking away."

As far as Keselowski is concerned, there's nothing to be done about car-to-car contact.

"The wedge flips," he said, "are part of it."

Keselowski, who led five times for a race-high 46 laps, sees the race from the point of view of the challenge and acknowledges that he enjoys the daredevil aspect of racing at Talladega.

"You know if you make a mistake here, there's going to be a really, really bad accident," he said. "You may get airborne."

If that sounds like Keselowski is throwing down a challenge to drivers who have second thoughts about racing at Talladega -- asking if they are up to the task -- there might be something to that. A student of the sport, Keselowski surely knows Dale Earnhardt Sr., who had a career-record 10 wins at Talladega, once challenged drivers to stay home if they were afraid of the restrictor-plate tracks.

Keselowski is currently distinguishing himself as a guy who wins regularly on NASCAR's fastest and most dangerous track. As it stands, any driver coming into Talladega who looks forward to the race is an increasingly rare species.

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