Brad Keselowski could very well be the luckiest driver in the NASCAR Cup Series. In the matter of a week, Keselowski has been the benefactor over late-race dramatics and has picked up his first two wins of the 2020 NCS season.
Keselowski’s latest win came after Chase Elliott slammed his door into Joey Logano for the lead with two laps to go in Sunday’s Food City Presents Supermarket Heroes 500 at Bristol. The two drivers rode the wall, while Keselowski scooted past and cruised to the win.
Video: Chase Elliott & Joey Logano Crash Hard in Turn 4 Battling for Victory at Bristol.
“Oh my goodness. I think everybody on this Discount Tires Ford Mustang team is going to go to Vegas — is it open, yet?” Keselowski joked after climbing from his No. 2 machine. “Cause things have been going our way from the luck of the draw in qualifying to the last few laps there.”
The 36-year old Keselowski now has 32-career Cup Series wins.
Clint Bowyer in the chaos surged to a second-place finish.
Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch and Erik Jones rounded out the top-five finishers in the race.
Austin Dillon finished sixth and Kurt Busch rebounded from a hard crash earlier in the race to nab a seventh-place finish.
William Byron, Christopher Bell and Bubba Wallace capped off the top-10 in the wild race, which featured 18 cautions.
The wild finish was setup by another wild moment in the closing laps. Denny Hamlin had the lead on lap 486, but he washed up the track, which allowed Joey Logano to get to the inside for the lead. However, Logano would also slide up the track into Hamlin and Chase Elliott would go by for the lead as the caution came out on lap 488.
It looked like Elliott had the race in hand, until Logano showcased speed on the final restart. In the end though, Logano would end up 21st and Elliott would finish 22nd.
The finish was bad enough, but Logano was more frustrated that Elliott wasn’t willing to apologize for the contact at the end.
“The part that’s frustrating is afterwards,” Logano seethed. “A simple apology — like come be a man come up to someone and say, ‘hey, my bad,’ but I had to force an apology which is childish.”
After the two separated from a heated post-race discussion, Elliott admitted the incident was his fault in his post-race interview.
“Just going for the win, you know trying to get a run underneath him got really loose in,” Elliott explained. “I don’t know if I had a tire going down or just got loose on entry. I don’t know. But as soon as I turned off the wall, I didn’t have a chance of making it. I’ll certainly take the blame.”
Post-Race Stat Pack:
