By virtue of winning the pole on Friday, Brad Keselowski was going to start from the lead no matter what happened on Saturday but he went out and validated the speed with a victory in the first All-Star Race heat.
Christopher Bell has visibly looked like the fastest car on the property all weekend and validated that with a victory in the second All-Star Race heat, too.
First, Keselowski delivered a defensive clinic in the first heat as he needed to fend off both William Byron and Ross Chastain on a tire disadvantage but did so successfully. Keselowski remained committed to the top as his two challengers each burned off their tires trying to pedal around him on the bottom.
Some of that was just a byproduct of the well-documented challenges this car has with passing on short tracks but it is also just a very competitive RFK Racing No. 6 Ford Mustang Dark Horse.
“Those guys were running hard and that’s what they’re supposed to do,” Keselowski said. “It’s always a battle on these short tracks to have the right balance between driving the car hard enough to stay up front, but not driving it too hard to run the tires off of it and that’s part of the challenge of being a race car driver and I welcome it.”
For what it’s worth, it’s not like clean air meant everything because James Small kept Chase Briscoe out on old tires in the second heat and Bell just blew his figurative doors off.
“So it seems like, if you stay out, you really, really, really need to keep the lead,” Bell said. “And it seems like we saw the same thing in heat race one, where Brad was able to win the race on the old tires, but Tyler Reddick who had old tires fell way back.
“So yeah, I mean it’s a very, very, tough decision and I’m thankful that I’m not in the crew chief’s box because it’s tough. And whatever you do, your opponents are going to do the opposite.”
With that said, Bell also thinks track position will be flipped a lot this year, and that the timing of cautions may ultimately be the biggest factor into the results.
“I think it’s going to come down to the yellow flags, who pits at the right time and being on the winning side of the strategy,” Bell said. “And, there’s no way to tell what the winning strategy is going to be until it plays out.”
Of note, Denny Hamlin was pretty well off the pace in both green flag runs of the second heat and will need Joe Gibbs Racing to make a pretty big set-up swing overnight.
The Promoters Caution
Bell wasn’t able to leave the media center on Saturday without being asked about the one wrinkle this race has this year, a caution that Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith can call upon at any point in prior to lap 220 of 250 but not if a naturally occurring caution waves after Lap 200.
“There it is, there it is,” Bell said with a laugh.
“I say ‘ill-timed yellow’ but that’s for us, but for the fans and everyone else, it’s probably a perfectly-timed yellow,” Bell said. “It will definitely be in play and then it will be decision time to decide what your best play to win the race will be. A lot of the time, that call depends on what other teams decide to do as well.
“If you stay out, and you have five or six stay out with you, that’s the winning call but like in the second heat race, if you stay out and no one else stays out, it was a losing call. The same call or the right call is dependent upon what everyone else does. It’s not just about a single team’s decision. It’s what the collective group does that determines the winner and losers.”
Is defending race winner Joey Logano ready for the promoter’s caution?
“We’re going to have to be,” he said with a laugh. “I guess the All Star Race presents an opportunity to do something outside of the box. I’m not really sure how I feel about it but at least we know about it and can’t complain about it.”
Hamlin says unexpected cautions naturally happen in races anyway so this is just par for the NASCAR course.
“It’s a pretty straightforward race other than the caution that could happen in that window,” Hamlin said. “You have to think that if they haven’t used it by the end of that window, they’re going to throw it. I would just plan on it and if we’re all planning on it, none of us are going to be thrown off by it.”
Austin Cindric says he’s just going to race when the green flag is out, stop racing when the caution comes out, and resume racing when it’s green again like any other week.
“I just do what I’m told at this poin,” Cindric said. “I don’t feel like I’m established enough to have that great of an opinion or have one that I think anyone is gonna care about, so at this point it’s just trying to maximize this format. That’s really how I feel. In some ways, I feel like I’ve had to do more prep work for this weekend than I’ve actually had to do for a regular season race, not because I want to win any race more than the next, but there are a lot of new things and a lot going on that you have to be prepared for and pay attention to.”
Starting lineups
All Star Race
- Brad Keselowski
- Christopher Bell
- Ross Chastain
- Joey Logano
- William Byron
- Chase Elliott
- Ryan Blaney
- Kyle Busch
- Alex Bowman
- Chris Buescher
- Josh Berry
- Daniel Suarez
- Tyler Reddick
- Chase Briscoe
- Austin Dillon
- Austin Cindric
- Ricky Stenhouse
- Harrison Burton
- Kyle Larson
- Denny Hamlin
- All Star Open Winner
- All Star Open Runner-Up
- Fan Vote Winner
All Star Open
- Shane Van Gisbergen
- Carson Hocevar
- Noah Gragson
- Michael McDowell
- Ryan Preece
- Zane Smith
- Justin Haley
- John Hunter Nemechek
- Ty Gibbs
- Ty Dillon
- Cole Custer
- Erik Jones
- Riley Herbst
- Bubba Wallace
- Cody Ware
- AJ Allmendinger
- Todd Gilliland
- Chad Finchum
