NASCAR Cup Series
Among the questions for Sylvania 300: Will Keselowski help Logano?
NASCAR Cup Series

Among the questions for Sylvania 300: Will Keselowski help Logano?

Published Sep. 21, 2014 9:39 a.m. ET

As we head into today's Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for not only our second race there this season but also the second race in the 2014 NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup, all but one of the drivers, crew chiefs and their teams have to be worried about one thing.

The guy who won Loudon earlier this year is the same guy who is on the pole for today's race. Oh by the way, he's also the guy who won last Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway and the Saturday night race the week before that at Richmond. Obviously, I am talking about the hottest driver on the circuit right now and that's Brad Keselowski.

The other thing that has to worry the other 42 competitors today is that Brad and crew chief Paul Wolfe, knowing they are already locked into the next round with last week's win, can try some things. They can gamble on strategy if they want simply because they have absolutely nothing to lose -- especially on a track where Brad obviously is so good.

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Basically Brad has a license to steal this weekend because they know that if they try and gamble on fuel but come up short, for instance, it doesn't affect them in the least.

Now the other question that comes to my mind is whether Brad might be willing to give up a little bit today if a scenario would play out where by doing so he could help his teammate Joey Logano make it into the next round. Would Keselowski be willing to do that, even though NASCAR will be watching closely and obviously would frown on any such attempt to "manipulate" the outcome of a race?

So I think an interesting storyline to watch today is whether the Penske guys are going to try and work together to help Joey clinch a spot in the second round of this year's Chase. As luck would have it, this also is a good race track for Joey as well. While Brad starts today's race on the pole, Joey is pretty close behind, as he starts seventh.

If Joey could win today that would mean Team Penske will have won both of the first two Chase races this year and that definitely will send a very strong message echoing throughout that NASCAR Sprint Cup garage area.

This is going to be a tough race. As we've told you in the past. It's a hard track to pass on, so track position is critical. It's a short race so you aren't going to have a lot of trips to pit road to improve on your car. Remember, too, that this is nothing more than a big Martinsville so today is going to be about taking care of your tires and saving your brakes.

There are going to be a lot of desperate drivers out there so you can never rule out someone rolling the dice and trying to win the race on fuel mileage. That's where you might see someone jump up there at the end today, throwing caution to the wind and attempting to steal themselves a race win. So today is going to be a really interesting race with lots of storylines to follow.

VIDEO: A look back at Joey Logano's third win of the season at Bristol

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