Keselowski cruises NNS to victory at Charlotte

Brad Keselowski cruised to his 11th career Nationwide Series win and fifth of the season on Friday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“It was a great run. The start of the race was pretty frustrating. We started third, had a great qualifying effort.” Keselowski said. “I’m so mentally exhausted after this race. I might be bias, but this was the best race that I’ve seen in my life. That was awesome!”

The final caution flag came out on lap 187. The race was restarted with an 8-lap shootout between Brad Keselowski, Martin Truex Jr., Joey Lagano and Justin Allgaier.   Keselowski cleared Truex Jr. with five laps remaining and cruised to victory by 1.138 seconds to win his first race at Charlotte.  

“I have never been so disappointed to run second. It looked like if those last couple cautions hadn’t come out, we were going to be in good shape. Just a little too tight after that last run there. It’s a shame because on the green flag runs we were really fast and really just called off the adjustments and then we got too tight later.” Truex Jr. said.  

Kyle Busch dominated the three quarters of the race and led a race high of 84 laps. Busch and Justin Allgaier made contact late in the race.  Busch faded back and finished in sixth place.  

Allgaier finished third, Logano fourth and Clint Bowyer finished fifth.  

“The Penske Dodge Challenger was awesome. These Verizon guys do a great job week in and week out. We don’t always get the results, but tonight they worked their tails off and we got a good finish.” Allgaier said.  

Danica Patrick scraped the wall on lap 11. Patrick battled back to finish 21^st.  

“It seems like every time we have a chance to have a great finish we crash.” Patrick said. “And every time we have a pretty average night we finish and we finish in the 20s.”
   

Lap Notables:   On lap 187, Steve Wallace gets into the wall on the backstretch.   On lap 182, Brian Scott spins on the frontstretch and drags his trunk-lid down the track.   On lap 72, Robert Richardson Jr. got loose in turn two and backed into the outside wall collecting Ryan Truex.   On lap 64, Brian Scott got loose and spun coming out of turn four.   On lap 10, Michael Annett got loose between turns one and two, collecting Joe Nemechek and Shelby Howard. Nemechek suffered heavy damage.   Parker Kligerman, No 26, making his first start at Charlotte brought out the first caution flag of the night on lap 2. Parker lost control in turn four and backed into the outside wall.    

Unofficial Race Results

Dollar General 300, Charlotte Motor Speedway

Race 31 of 35 – October 15, 2010