NASCAR Cup Series

Keselowski a surprising frontrunner

Published Sep. 26, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

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The best race teams always learn from their mistakes.

This season, Brad Keselowski and the No. 2 Penske Racing Dodge team have learned their lessons well.

Nine races ago, Keselowski finished 35th in the first Sprint Cup race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this year and dropped to 23rd in the points standings.

On Sunday, the Blue Deuce finished second to Tony Stewart and Keselowski vaulted from sixth in the points standings to third.

Just call Keselowski the teacher’s pet.

“Whoever thought we would be third in 10 weeks?,” Keselowski asked after the race. “I’d like to see some kind of stat for that.”

So, let’s do the math. The numbers in the past nine races are solid. An average finish of 4.3 and a 20-position gain in the points standings. Not bad for a driver who was one of NASCAR’s wild cards to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

It has been a gradual progression for Keselowski and his crew chief, Paul Wolfe. The pair won the Nationwide Series title decisively last season, but Keselowski floundered at the Cup level. The decision to promote Wolfe to crew chief of the No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge at the end of last year has been the key for Keselowski’s dramatic turnaround in NASCAR’s top tour.

It took the team 10 races to earn a respectable finish, a third at the prestigious Darlington Raceway. Three races later, Keselowski won his first race under the Penske banner. That came at Kansas Speedway, a track NASCAR will revisit two weeks from now.

Granted, there were still a few growing pains along the way. But Keselowski scored his third top 10, a seventh-place at Kentucky Speedway, to start the second half of the season on July 9. Despite a rough ride at Loudon the following week and a broken ankle during a test crash 10 days later, Keselowski and Wolfe have made one of the most calculated comebacks in Sprint Cup.

“To have three wins now in this season from where we started the year just shows all the hard work that everybody has been doing back at the shop,” Keselowski said. “All these guys on the pit crew, we had the pit stop that counted (on Sunday). They did their deal.

“Everybody is doing their part. We're building fast Chargers, and I'm just really proud of everyone on this team."

Acclimating to the longer races in the Cup series was one of the early obstacles for Keselowski and Wolfe. Not only must a driver have the stamina to go the distance, but the crew chief must be able to decipher data and call for the right adjustments to dial the car in throughout the race. While Keselowski believes a combination of “hard work and focus” led to the team’s turnaround, Wolfe‘s calm demeanor has rubbed off on his men, as well.

“We've definitely kind of got things going for us right now, and it's weird because it's not really doing anything different,“ Wolfe said. “It's been a lot of small things over the past couple months just starting to add up. And we've got fast race cars, the driver is doing his part, the pit crew is doing their part and we're making good calls on pit road and adjustments.

“The biggest thing for me that I've noticed being in the Cup series is these races are a lot longer, obviously, than the Nationwide races I'm used to, and you've got to be able to adjust on your car as the track changes. And as the race goes on, everybody seems to get better.”

Wolfe acknowledges the organization has made improvements throughout the car, from the chassis to the aerodynamics and the engine. Along with building a lot of adjustability into the chassis to make the necessary changes at the track, the Dodges have a solid balance between horsepower and fuel economy, which has benefited both the Nos. 2 and 22 of teammate Kurt Busch during the fuel-mileage bouts this season.

"The key thing," Wolfe said, "(is) having good fuel mileage and being able to have the speed to go with it.”

Wolfe said his comfort level has risen when returning to tracks for a second time. That’s when the crew chief first noticed his team “starting to shine.”

Here’s a quick comparison between the first and second races on repeat tracks:

At Daytona, the team finished 29th in the first race of the season, 15th in the return trip. At Pocono Raceway, the team finished 23rd. When it returned? Keselowski won. At Michigan International Speedway, the team went from a finish of 25th to third. At Bristol Motor Speedway, Keselowski was 18th in the first visit this year and won in his return. At Richmond International Raceway, Keselowski improved from a finish of 36th earlier in the year to 12th. And at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the team went from finishing 35th in the first race to second on Sunday.

After the team’s win at Bristol, Wolfe said competing for the title this season would be a “tough task . . . but it's something I feel like everybody on this team is capable of.” With top-five finishes in the first two races of the Chase, Wolfe’s optimism is cautiously rising.

“It gives us momentum, and we feel like going back to Dover we had a top-10 car there the first race,” Wolfe said. “I think we finished 12th but had a top-10 car, and we feel that we can improve on that and (it will) be a better race for us, hopefully, next week and, hopefully, have a shot to win.”

Keselowski was a bit nervous entering New Hampshire. After all, his average finish there was 21.2 before Sunday. But the team’s homework paid off. Now, Keselowski is ready for his next test at Dover International Speedway, where he finished 13th in May.

“You can’t help but compare it to Bristol. And after winning Bristol, I feel really good going there,” Keselowski said. “I feel like our best races in the Chase are going to be our last five or six races, to be quite honest, with maybe the exception of Texas. We’ll have to wait and see how that one goes.

“If we get through this first four or five, you know, I think we’ve got a really good shot at it. To get through Chicago with a fifth and (New Hampshire with) a second, it’s a huge booster of morale for my team and momentum for Penske Racing.

“We’ve been able to capitalize with good execution on pit road and good adjustments on our car and not getting caught up in somebody else’s mess. But, you know, that stuff can go the other way just as easily as it’s gone the right way for us over the last few weeks.

“I’m still very proud of what we’ve done but we still have a long ways to go, a really long way.”

But don’t anticipate a slump for this team’s sophomore season.

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