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Brad Keselowski and teammate Chris Buescher gave Roush Fenway Kewelowski Racing a sweep of the Blue Green Vacations Duel qualifying races for the Daytona 500.
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The wins gave Keselowski and Buescher the second row for Sunday’s 500.
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Ford’s strong showing in the Duels gives the Blue Oval the favorite’s hat for The Great American Race.
NASCAR was have a lap from completing the always-dangerous Bluegreen Vacations Duel Daytona 500 qualifying races Thursday night without the appearance of a caution flag.
That was too much to ask for.
On the last lap of the second 150-miler, Ford drivers Joey Logano and Chris Buescher were racing for the win when Logano moved down the track in an attempt to block Buescher’s advance. Buescher hit Logano and sent the No. 22 car into the outside wall. When Logano bounced off the fence, he was hit by the following Ford of Harrison Burton.
The caution was the first of the evening, and it gave the win to Buescher, who held the lead when the yellow lights ignited.
Buescher’s victory completed a stunning night for the newly renovated Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing team. Brad Keselowski, who became an owner of the RFK Racing last year, won the first race. It marked the first sweep of the two races by a team since 2015.
After Chevrolets took the front row in single-car qualifying for the 500 Wednesday, Ford drivers took the first four positions in race one and the first three in race two Thursday night.
Perhaps more important than the wins, however, was the fact that Logano, as a result of what he called his “dumb mistake” and contact with Buescher, took the hardest hit yet in the new Next Gen car and walked away unscathed (that is, except for his embarrassment). Solid contact with the outside wall flattened the front of the No. 22 Ford, leaving Logano and Team Penske with a backup car for the 500.
What We Learned from Thursday Night’s 300 Miles:
• Fords are powerful in the draft. Despite Chevrolet’s strength in time trials, the Blue Oval will roll into Sunday wearing the favorite’s hat.
• Bump drafting is riskier than with the previous car model. “But, in theory, it’s the same for everybody,” Keselowski said, “so it’s just another thing for us to manage, and that’s our job as race car drivers is always to understand the risk versus reward of every move we do, and to be right on the edge but not over it.” Ryan Blaney described bumping in the draft as “not comfortable at all. It’s hard not to move around when it’s all over the place.”
• Greg Biffle, long absent from the Cup tour, can still drive. Despite problems, he advanced to the 500 with a car barely finished in time for SpeedWeek.
• The low line might be the go line Sunday. “Like when we got single file in the past we’d always run the top, so it gets really easy to go and get on a guy’s left-rear and get away and kind of slide job and get back up,” Chase Briscoe said. “But with these cars it seems like you just have to run the bottom, and it’s just so hard to do anything until guys start going two-wide. Even in practice yesterday, I felt like when we did run two-wide the bottom was almost always better. It’s just really hard to make that top lane go for whatever reason.”
• Kaz Grala REALLY wanted to be in the 500. Grala rallied from a pit road speeding penalty to pass J.J. Yeley on the last lap of the first Duel to advance to the 500, putting a team co-owned by boxing great Floyd Mayweather in the big race.