NASCAR insiders rip disastrous Brad Keselowski, No. 6 team decisions at Pocono

Brad Keselowski will take a P9 finish at Pocono Raceway given the season he’s had. That being said, it could have been much more, perhaps a win, for the 2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion.

Two critical errors were the difference between a top 10 and a possible trip to Victory Lane. Keselowski surrendered the lead by coming down pit road during Stage 2. The only problem was that pit road was closed at the time. He was penalized for the infraction.

Still, there was plenty of race left. Keselowski told his team the race would come back to them, and he was right. Keselowski had the advantage over the field on fuel in Stage 3 and as others pitted, he stayed out to enjoy the clean air in front of him. Keselowski’s team urged him to pit as his lap times fell off. He insisted on staying out in clean air. The late spin from Shane van Gisbergen solidified his fate in the race. With that caution, Keselowski was out of sequence on the pit cycle and from P24, he was too far back to contend for the win.

NASCAR insider recaps Brad Keselowski’s errors at Pocono

Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic recapped Keselowski and the No. 6 team’s errors at Pocono on “The Teardown” podcast. The NASCAR insider couldn’t believe a veteran driver made those mistakes.

“You’re leading the race, and you pit when pit road is closed? It wasn’t a situation where there was a vehicle on pit road and you thought, ‘OK, they’re gonna clear out.’ It’s like a very straightforward approach here of how to do this, and to mismanage that, to have miscommunication be the reason — you can’t do that. That, to me, is the glaring thing,” Bianchi said. “And then the call of we’re going to stay out again, we’re going to try to play the game and then they got bit by the caution. They didn’t do a very good job of managing this right.

“It was like every time they put themselves in a position to capitalize, they took a shotgun to their foot and then they gotta play catch-up again. That’s a really hard spot to be in a race where track position is everything. This is a strategy race and you’re doing two things that are inherently going to hurt your track position in a significant way? That’s a deficit that you can’t overcome. For a team that’s in a must-win position, that’s not good.”

Brad Keselowski botches golden opportunity at Pocono

Keselowski entered Sunday’s race 32nd in the points standings. He’s now up to 30th, but it’s clear his only path to the playoffs is by winning one of nine remaining regular season races. Pocono was right there for him, and it didn’t go his way.

“It was interesting to hear both [Carson] Hocevar and [Denny] Hamlin behind Brad fake coming to pit road because they didn’t want Brad to realize his error and suddenly stay out. They were like, ‘Oh, we’ll come with you.’ … I think the other mistake — it’s tough because was it a mistake? It was really bad timing,” Jeff Gluck of The Athletic said. “… Suddenly, he goes from traffic and dirty air to he’s got nothing but clean air in front of him. So, he’s like, ‘Sweet.’ He’s ripping laps. But sooner than I expected — it sounded like sooner than Brad expected — they say, ‘Pit this time by.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, can we not go out, maybe stay out one or two [laps] more?’ And they’re like, ‘You’re losing time now to the cars who have come in and got fresh tires.’

“So, I think he, on his own, said, ‘I’m going to stay out one more lap here.’ Of all things that happens, SVG spins and causes a caution as he’s gonna come to pit road on the extra lap he stayed out to run. He just wanted that clean air one more lap before he came in. And it bit him, and it ruined his race. He ran up from 24th back to ninth, but [that doesn’t matter].”