Bearden Breakdown: Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard

By Aaron Bearden, Motorsports Editor

INDIANAPOLIS — Post-race review and analysis from the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Who Won? 

Brad Keselowski. He surged to the lead with fresher tires than his competition and never looked back, scoring his first win at the Brickyard.

Who Claimed the Stages?

Clint Bowyer and Matt Kenseth. Bowyer surged to the top in a caution-filled opening stage, while Kenseth surprised the field and benefitted from a group pitting before Stage 2 ended to score the first stage win for the No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing team.

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Team Penske Finally Crosses NASCAR Off the Indy Bucket :ist

Roger Penske is one of the biggest legend in Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with a record 17 triumphs in the Indianapolis 500 as a car owner. So his legacy at the Brickyard was never in doubt.

But despite all of the success the man known as ‘The Captain’ had enjoyed at Indy, one thing had always eluded him – a triumph in the Brickyard 400.

That all changed on Monday.

At the end of a miserable, rainy weekend in Indianapolis, Brad Keselowski surged ahead of Denny Hamlin in the penultimate lap to claim victory in the Big Machine Vodka 400 at the Brickyard. The win was his second in as many weeks, following another marquee triumph in Darlington Raceway’s Southern 500.

Penske wasn’t at the track – Keselowski claimed he was “on a secret mission somewhere.” But even without his presence the win carried more weight.

“At the risk of sounding a little trite, winning her 17 times with the 500 sets the standard,” Team Penske Executive Vice President Walt Czarnecki said. “And this is something we’ve been trying to do for 25 years. Been close, I guess we finished second five times, so to be able to do it today with this Discount Tire Ford is really special.”

Penske also put out a statement in the moments after the race, which marked his team’s 499th win across all motorsports.

“This is certainly a great win for Team Penske,” Penske said. “The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is such a special place to me personally and the success we have enjoyed there has really helped build our team and continue to raise our level of performance.

“Earning Team Penske’s first win in the Brickyard 400, especially coming just a couple of months after winning the Indianapolis 500, is a credit to everyone that works so hard throughout our organization. Congratulations to Brad (Keselowski), Paul (Wolfe) and everyone on the No. 2 Discount Tire Ford team. Well done and now we look forward to the opportunity to pursue Team Penske’s 500th win!”

The win was also special for Keselowski. Not just because of the importance it carried for Penske, but because of how close he’d been so many times before. Just last year Keselowski was forced to come to terms with a bittersweet second-place finish, losing out on the lead to eventual winner Kasey Kahne in a late restart.

Losing in such heartbreaking fashion stung. But it made the win all the more worth it.

“Victories like this are sweeter when you’ve had failures beforehand, and I feel like I’ve had a car capable of winning this race two or three times in the past,” he said. “Today was probably not even in the top 3 for cars that I’ve had here. With that in mind, either I didn’t execute or we didn’t execute as a team, and so you try to learn from that, and you try to be better, and apply yourself in the best way possible, and today we executed across the board.”

Keselowski’s two-race win streak comes at an opportune time. The end of Indianapolis means the Cup field is set to begin their postseason next weekend with the new playoff opener at Las Vegas. By securing a pair of victories in the final moments of the regular season, Keselowski completed a meteoric rise to fourth in the championship standings.

Those extra playoff points mean he’s in a good spot to try to race his way into a second-straight Championship 4 bid. But the veteran steered away from claiming wins on the unique Darlington and Indy ovals would translate to postseason success.

“The next 10 weeks are races upon their own,” he said. “There’s a lot of conversation based around momentum, and today is certainly great, but there’s not a lot we’re going to really take from it from Vegas other than the five bonus points and the money.

“We’re proud of this win for sure, but it’s no guarantee for any success in the playoffs. We have to go out and earn it each and every lap of each and every race.”

Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer frustrated by late-race crashes

Before Keselowski swooped in to steal the day, it appeared Hamlin and Clint Bowyer would be the two battling for the opportunity to kiss the bricks. They had arguably the best two cars, had seemingly played strategy to perfection and were dueling for the race win throughout the closing run to the checkered.

But in the end late cautions sent both of their days awry. A yellow for debris bunched the field up on Lap 144, and the ensuing crash between Jeffrey Earnhardt and Landon Cassill on Lap 155 allowed the surging Keselowski to rise into contention and snag an unexpected win.

Hamlin and Bowyer would have to settle for third and fifth, respectively.

The frustration of the loss setting in, Hamlin didn’t mince words when asked what he needed to hold onto a victory at the end.

“Not have meaningless guys in the back wreck,” he said. “I don’t know what they’re doing crashing with a couple laps to go, multiple laps down. Meaningless.

“Besides that, all those caution allowed the guys who took tires and save their strategy – allowed them to come back up there and obviously allowed the 2 (Keselowski) to kind of rough us up there at the end. Very unfortunate, but it’s what happens sometimes.”

The win could have been Hamlin’s breakout moment, allowing him to enter the playoffs with his first victory of the year in the same way he entered the 2016 season with a marquee triumph in the Daytona 500. Instead he’ll begin the postseason winless, with just three playoff points to his name.

That puts Hamlin on the wrong side of the cutoff going into the Round of 16 opener at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But the Joe Gibbs Racing veteran wasn’t worried about that in the minutes after Indianapolis.

“I don’t even care about the playoffs at this moment,” he said. “All I care about is not winning this race. It’s one that was big on my list of races that I wanted to win and the team gave me a car that was certainly capable of doing that today and executed flawlessly on pit lane.

“The strategy was good. I had a fast car. Just circumstances. The cautions. Cautions killed us at the end and allowed those guys to come up here.”

He isn’t entering the postseason in the same hole as Hamlin after earning two early wins, but Bowyer left Indy with the same frustration.

After leading 37 laps and winning the opening stage, Bowyer was in as good of a position to claim the crown jewel event as he’s been in during any point in his career. The Kansas native led the field entering the final round of pit stops. Though strategy lost him the lead to Hamlin, Bowyer’s No. 14 Ford was the quicker car of the two and he found himself inching his way toward the leader when the first of two late cautions flew.

Bowyer wasn’t upset with himself or his Stewart-Haas Racing team’s strategy after the race. He felt they’d given him a great shot to win. But the frustration of losing out on a chance to end the regular season in victory lane to late cautions left the veteran understandably disappointed.

“Man, it’s a game of luck,” he said. “There wasn’t really any strategy. You can’t strategize for cautions that you don’t know are gonna exist.

“I felt like we were definitely faster than the 11, but when he beat us out of the pits there, that position nobody passed anybody for the lead and unless they were a huge advantage on tires, and then all of a sudden the cautions come out and hand the 2 the win. That’s what’s frustrating, but that’s the nature of the beast here.”

Adding insult to Bowyer’s loss was the fact that the winner was Keselowski. Bowyer came into the final round of the regular season in position to enter the playoffs in fourth due to his playoff points for wins. But Keselowski’s second triumph in as many weeks pushed the 2012 champion four spots clear of Bowyer for the position.

That isn’t critical now, but could come into play later this fall as those drivers outside of the ‘Big Three’ compete for what may become the fourth and final available spot to compete for a title at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Despite that, or perhaps even because of it, Bowyer looked for the positives he could take from the lost race in the moments after his run.

“You’ve got to use good runs like that for a confidence-booster for the Playoffs,” he said. “It was a good run for us.”

Hendrick Motorsports Survives as the Playoff Field is Set

After seven months of twists, turns and occasional spot of turmoil, the Cup Series playoff field is set. In truth it’s been pretty well locked in since June.

The lack of a surprise winner on Monday meant Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Alex Bowman claimed the final two postseason spots, giving the organization three of the 16 playoff positions with the addition of Watkins Glen International winner Chase Elliott. Only rookie William Byron failed to earn a right to compete for the championship.

By making the playoff field, Johnson continued his streak as the only driver to compete in every postseason since NASCAR launched what was then the Chase for the Cup in 2004. That was something to celebrate, though the tumultuous regular season that preceded the distinction was far from the norm for the seven-time champion.

“That is definitely the silver lining for today,” Johnson said. “I expected more and certainly wanted more, but we transferred, we are still alive and hopefully we can go some rounds and get hot at the right time.”

Bowman’s playoff berth gives the Arizona native a chance to earn a championship in his first full year for HMS.

For many earning such an opportunity would be worth celebrating, but after a 33rd-place run at Indy Bowman found little cause for optimism.

“I don’t know if being the last car to lock in the playoffs is a big achievement here at HMS,” Bowman said. “You look at achievements here, it’s championships, wins, domination. We’ve got to get to that level before we’re happy, but we’re making stew in the right direction.

“To overcome everything we’ve been through this year and make the playoffs is a good thing. But we need to keep fighting.”

Johnson and Bowman are the only drivers entering the postseason without playoff points. They’ll start the playoffs tied for 15th in the standings, sitting five points behind the Round of 12 cutoff.

The virtual reset of the playoffs means either driver could make a miraculous playoff run. But neither driver expressed optimism about their playoff chances, instead noting opportunities for improvement and a need for consistency to make a postseason push.

“I feel like we’re off on everything,” Bowman said. “It all adds up, little-by-little. We’ve just got to continue to get better.

“I’ve made mistakes, we’ve had issues with cars, it’s just been all over the place. We’ve just got to start executing better. It’s been poor for the last three weeks. Even Bristol we had a bad day and just rebounded. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Johnson’s first winless regular season leaves him in an unusually quiet position as he searches for his eighth title. The 42-year-old believes his veteran No. 48 team will need to rely on the consistency and clutch performances shown in years like his 2016 title run to survive and mount a serious playoff charge.

“We have a lot of experience,” he said. “I think our experience in pressure-packed situations will help us and hopefully help us get where we need to. But, we do need speed. I’m looking at experience and I’m also looking at time. We still have ten weeks left to find some speed.

“If we can win at some key races and transfer; we have the ROVAL in the first round, we have short tracks, we have my best track at Dover. If we can stay alive and get to Homestead, who knows what can happen down there.”

For more information no the 2018 playoff field, feel free to check out my weekly Playoff Points post.

Other Notes

• Monday’s race offered three rarities. Not only was it an Xfinity-Cup doubleheader, but the two tours both raced without a single lap of previous track time on the weekend, and with vastly different aero packages. It’s difficult to glean too much from such a random set of circumstances, but the day left many questions about numerous subjects floating around the paddock.
• Regan Smith executed the super cub role to perfection once again. With Kasey Kahne out of the No. 95 and searching for answers to heat exhaustion issues, Smith put together a quietly solid run to finish 20th in his first Cup start of 2018.
• Lost in the late surge from Keselowski and frustration from Hamlin and Bowyer was the surprising runner-up performance of Erik Jones. The Michigander made his name runner Super Late Model races at nearby tracks like Winchester Speedway and Anderson Speedway. He wasn’t dominant by any stretch on Monday, but surged when it counted to claim a result “like we need to have when we’re in the playoffs. When we’re not a car that can contend, just persevere and make the most of what we can and that’s what we did today.”
• Are the Big Three an intermediate-exclusive affair? With NASCAR free of the 1.5-mile ovals in this late summer stretch, the rest of the field claimed four of the past five regular season races. Only Kevin Harvick mounted a serious charge on Sunday, slotting in fourth after leading 22 laps.