Keselowski Takes the Win at the NASCAR Nationwide Dollar General 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway

Kyle Busch owned the first half of the Dollar General 300 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, but it was the wrong half. Clint Bowyer, who started from the pole, then came to the front, but sent himself to the back of the pack with a pit lane speeding penalty.

Brad Keselowski, who moved to the front on a gutsy strategy call, proved to be the fastest car on the track for the last fifty-seven laps of the race, rolling home more than a second ahead of Martin Truex Jr. despite nursing aging tires.

Keselowski was exhausted but ebullient after the race, tired out by his forty-lap battle with Martin Truex, Jr. “I am so mentally exhausted after this race,” he told ESPN. “I thought this was the best race I have ever seen on my life; I can only imagine what the fans saw.

“The decision to stay out—we knew our car was running pretty good. We pitted like, five laps before the yellow came out and felt really good about it. Paul [Wolfe], my crew chief, made the adjustment right there at the end on the last stop and my car was just flying—I knew we had what it takes.

“We quite honestly weren’t very good on the test day and weren’t very good on the first half of the race. I have to give the credit to Paul—that guy is amazing. He gave me the car I needed to win.”

Keselowski and Truex went fender-to-fender for much of the final forty laps, trading the lead and pushing each other (and getting pushed by teammates—bump-drafting was the order of the day at Charlotte.) Truex took the lead after a restart on lap 186, but after an immediate caution and another restart on lap 192, Brad Keselowski, despite his worn out rubber, managed to pass Truex.

The pair ran door-to-door for a lap before Keselowski was finally able to pull ahead. Once clear, he opened a gap of over a second, setting fastest lap of the race two laps in the row, and showing everybody why he will almost certainly win the nationwide series this season.

Martin Truex was disappointed to only finish second; he was so close to the win, but lost it in the final laps.

“It’s hard to finish second with a car that good,” he explained. “We were in good shape there until those last couple cautions. The car was so good on those long green-flag runs that we didn’t make any adjustments and that hurt us.

“Once we had that last caution it seemed like the car was tighter from there on out, and that’s what lost the race for us and won it for Brad.

“I want to win again and I’m going to win again just came up a little short tonight.”

Final Test for the Nationwide CoT

Charlotte was the fourth and final 2010 race using the Nationwide version of the Car of Tomorrow (CoT,) which is mechanically similar to the Sprint Cup version but has different front suspension and four different (but nearly identical) body styles: Ford Mustang, Dodge Challenger, Chevrolet Impala, and Toyota Camry.

The bodies are almost entirely identical, with some side window and grill differences to establish brand identity without creating aerodynamic differences. None of the cars look anything like their street counterparts.

The Nationwide CoT first ran at Daytona in the Subway Jalapeno 250 in July, where Dale Earnhardt Jr, won, and then at the Carfax 250 at Michigan International Speedway in August, where Brad Keselowski got his first NNS CoT win.

After two Superspeedway runs, the NNS CoT was next tested at the Virginia 529 College Savings 250 at Richmond International Raceway, a three-quarter-mile bullring where Kevin Harvick proved he could go fast in the new car on a short track.

Carl Edwards told ESPN before the race that the biggest differences were not for the engineers, but for the drivers. The new car is very different aerodynamically, and the driving styles which worked best with the old cars don’t transfer over to the NNS CoT.

The NNS CoT has more downforce than its Cup brother, and punches a bigger hole through the air; drivers were bump-drafting as if they were on a superspeedway on Charlotte’s 1.5 miles of banking.

Many speculated that the new car would even things out between the big and small teams. Judging from Charlotte’s results, the fast guys are fast in whatever cars they drive.

Danica Patrick’s Best Finish

Danica Patrick’s first outing in the new NNS CoT was a disappointment to her—judging by her expression after the race—but a victory for her team. Patrick finished 21st, her highest finish of her stock car career, but after her run at Fontana this was a letdown.

It seems like every time we have a chance to have a great finish, we crash, and every time we have a pretty average night I finish in the 20’s,” she told ESPN, looking very dejected..

Patrick slipped into IndyCar lingo while describing how her car was working during the race. “We were running a little hot on the first run, and then we took tape off and I guess too much came off.

“You lose the noseweight then, so it was just overall I felt like the car had a little less downforce than it had—downforce look at my words. It felt like it wasn’t into the ground as much, it didn’t feel like it was stuck as well.”

“We tried to work with it—a couple of changes were good in the race but nothing overcame that feeling of not being gripped up out there.”

Despite her disappointment, Patrick found positives in the experience. “We did our best. We had some high points this weekend, and that hasn’t happened a lot of other times I’ve been to a track for the first time, so we’ll take the high points and we’ll take a non-crashed car home and learn from this new car this time, and move on.

“I know the rest are all new tracks for me as well, but the good news is that next year, they won’t be new tracks for me, so hopefully we can have that kind of improvement we saw last weekend at Fontana.”

The GoDaddy girl had been hoping to finish in the top fifteen for the final races of the season, but mastering the new car proved to be a challenge for driver and crew. Patrick qualified a very respectable 18th; she didn’t have the car to run higher. 

Patrick did run alongside James Buescher briefly. Beuscher knocked her out of the Fontana race nine laps from the checkered flag, and she had made a few comments about not being afraid to bump back if he tried to muscle her aside again.

Despite the banter, the pair raced cleanly. Beuscher finished sixteenth.

The NASCAR Nationwide Series heads for Madison, Illinois for the 5-Hour Energy 250 at Gateway International Raceway on October 23. Tickets are available online.

Coverage of the race on ESPN2 starts at 3 p.m. Eastern.

NASCAR Nationwide Dollar Genral 300
	#	Driver	Lap	Gap	Points
1	22	Brad Keselowski	200	0.000	4954
2	00	Martin Truex Jr.	200	1.138	428
3	12	Justin Allgaier	200	1.847	4103
4	20	Joey Logano	200	1.952	3557
5	21	Clint Bowyer	200	2.153	1433
6	18	Kyle Busch	200	2.664	4439
7	32	Reed Sorenson	200	3.936	3162
8	88	Aric Almirola	200	4.532	679
9	1	Ryan Newman	200	4.996	1393
10	33	Kevin Harvick	200	5.341	3902
11	62	Brendan Gaughan	200	5.985	3346
12	11	David Reutimann	200	5.997	514
13	60	Carl Edwards	200	6.183	4504
14	6	Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	200	6.340	2887
15	38	Jason Leffler	200	6.923	3433
16	10	James Buescher	200	7.408	1193
17	17	Trevor Bayne	200	7.485	3503
18	43	Josh Wise	200	11.296	2010
19	16	Colin Braun	199	1 Lap	2252
20	34	Tony Raines	198	2 Laps	3033
21	7	Danica Patrick	198	2 Laps	660
22	25	Kelly Bires	198	2 Laps	1019
23	24	Eric McClure	198	2 Laps	2167
24	05	David Starr	197	3 Laps	346
25	01	Mike Wallace	197	3 Laps	2846
26	81	Michael McDowell	196	4 Laps	2557
27	28	Kenny Wallace	195	5 Laps	2796
28	09	Brian Scott	192	8 Laps	3098
29	66	Steve Wallace	188	12 Laps	3427
30	27	Hermie Sadler	188	12 Laps	195
31	40	Mike Bliss	176	24 Laps	2978
32	35	Jason Keller	170	30 Laps	2356
33	23	Robert Richardson Jr.	130	70 Laps	1697
34	04	Jeremy Clements	118	82 Laps	1099
35	98	Paul Menard	117	83 Laps	3929
36	15	Michael Annett	73	127 Laps	3242
37	99	Ryan Truex	72	128 Laps	461
38	56	Kevin Lepage	25	175 Laps	925
39	70	Shelby Howard	19	181 Laps	1746
40	49	Mark Green	12	188 Laps	1665
41	87	Joe Nemechek	10	190 Laps	2623
42	36	Jeff Green	4	196 Laps	712
43	26	Parker Kligerman	3	197 Laps	905