By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
The Coca-Cola 600 just wasn’t meant to be for Brad Keselowski and his No. 2 Team Penske team.
From a speed perspective, Keselowski knew that the team was a way off from where they wanted to be, but with pit road strategy from Paul Wolfe, crew chief, coming into play, Keselowski knew his team was strong because of that. The veteran driver knew Penske had strong cars but were way out of the league of what Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr. were doing.
“I ran as hard as I could tonight and the team did a great job the last few stops to put us in a position and that was just kind of what we had. We’ll go back to the drawing board and try to find some more speed. If we keep this execution that we had tonight, then we’ll get some wins, but we’ve got to have more speed,” Keselowski said.
Despite the lack of speed, Keselowski was proud of how his team persevered through the challenges of 600 miles to achieve a fourth-place finish.
“We didn’t give up. I feel like at the end of the day we overachieved with our finish, which is something you want to do as a team. I thought we would have more speed than we did today.”