FOX Sports – By: Joe Menzer
Brad Keselowski won Sunday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway in improbable fashion on a day when it looked like no one was going to be able to touch Kevin Harvick.
Harvick absolutely dominated the race, starting from the pole and leading nearly every lap until a pit-road speeding penalty with 13 laps to go took him from the lead to 35th as the last car on the lead lap.
After Harvick’s costly mistake, Kyle Larson inherited the lead in his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Ford — but he appeared to make his own mistake shortly thereafter, drifting up to take the high line on a day when the bottom seemed to have been working for him. Keselowski got underneath Larson in his No. 2 Team Penske Ford with seven laps to go and never looked back.
“You never know. That’s how these races are,” Keselowski said. “We had a lot of adversity today, there’s no doubt about that.
“These races aren’t easy. They’re 500 miles and a lot can happen and when you think you’ve got it, they slip away. I know how it goes. This one kind of fell in our lap at the end and my team put it all together when it counted.”
It was the fifth time in last six years Harvick has led the most laps at Atlanta — and each time he has failed to win.
“This place, for whatever reason, I just feel like I’m snake-bitten,” Harvick said. “It’s my own doing today. I really didn’t think I was even close on pit lane. It gets to bouncing around, I thought I was being conservative, apparently I wasn’t. … I was just pushing it too hard.” The only time Harvick lost the lead all day until his unfathomable pit-road gaffe came during a mid-race pit cycle when Keselowski grabbed the point for a handful of laps.
