Keselowski Takes Atlanta! (2-24-19)

By:Becca Cottingham

Headline Photo From: Motorsport.com

In the opening laps from Atlanta Motorsports Speedway, we saw some great racing mid-pack. The cars were on a green track after rain moved through overnight. Causing NASCAR to throw a competition caution at lap 35. Cars were going three and four wide. You also saw how the new spoiler on this body style car truly can play an effect on how the car he drives. Just the smallest bit of air removed from that spoiler causes cars who are loose right, rear to get loose. A great example is when Clint Bowyer was working to pass someone during the race.

The drivers are seeing that it is a dog fight in the back of the field. The drivers up front like Aric Almirola truly are better off. You are able to pass as drivers such as Kevin Harvick moved from eighteenth into the top ten within the first twenty laps. The competition caution will probably be the best thing for drivers. A lot of the drivers leading up to this competition caution are all over the place. They are under completely different weather conditions than what they practiced. When they unloaded these cars, during practice, and even qualifying these cars dealt with cloudy skies. Tires, as usual, are playing another huge factor. Left side tires are being worn out faster than right side tires. Goodyear made the tires slightly different for both sides.

We had Kyle Busch that tire issue that brought out a caution flag. Then one of the front runners, Kyle Larson made a huge mistake on pit road that took him from running first to the back of the pack. He was hit with a penalty for driving too fast exiting pit lane. That was all followed up with the second week in a row with a pit road incident that blocked leader Ryan Blaney on pit road.

In the last few laps of the final stage, we had multiple drivers coming to pit road due to tire issues. The tires coming off the cars were absolutely shredded. Brad Keselowski being slick had pushed his way through the field but Martin Truex Jr caught up with him in the final laps, because of Keselowski having a possible tire issue himself. However, even with the tire issues Brad Keselowski was able to win his 2nd career race at Atlanta in the Monster Energy Series and captured his 1st Of The season. Now Keselowski has at least one victory a season 10 out of 12 years in NASCAR top series!

Next Monster Energy Race will be this Sunday, March 3 in Las Vegas at 3:30 EST. Please make sure to tune into “Monster Minutes” this weekend to preview this weekend races.