And they're off.........
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by Dan Peters

One down, 9 to go for Keselowski.

"It feels like Round 1 of a heavyweight title bout," said Keselowski, who took the series points lead for the first time in his career. "It's a 10-round bout. Week one's done. We might have won the round, but we didn't by any means knock 'em out.

 
"We've got a lot of racing left to go. We're feeling good about today, but (we) know that we have a lot of work to do."

#48 Johnson would lead 172 Laps today after claiming the Pole for the 12th annual Geico 400
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Keselowski would pull away to win by 3.171 seconds over Johnson, who led a race-high 172 laps but couldn't catch Keselowski during the last green-flag run.

Johnson would claim that Keselowski was driving too aggressively, "He did cut up early," Johnson said. "It did impede my progress. I had to check up and wasn't sure where things were going. But it didn't affect the outcome, I don't believe.

 
"The way he made quick work of traffic and stretched it out on me, I'm not sure I would have held him off. At the time, it messed me up, but I don't think it played (a part in the) outcome in the race."

Greg Biffle #16 started 22nd and his pit crew made adjustments to finish 13th
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Jeff Gordon #24 was strong at times, but a stuck throttle caused him to crash on lap 189.

Keselowski thought he was well within the spirit and letter of the law in re-entering off Turn 2. And he was.

 
"There is no enforced line like you see in other sports, and that's not a bad thing," Keselowski said. "That's just one more thing to monitor during the race. But it's certainly a,  I don't want to say a gentlemen's agreement, it's a policy of merging down the backstretch, off of Turn 2, I think it said specifically in the driver's meeting, and I feel like that's what we did.

 
"You can make rules that count it down to the inches and just make it a pain in the [neck] for everybody that participates in the sport, or you can just have a rule like we do, and I felt like I was inside those guidelines."

From elation of Richmond, to the disappointment at Chicago

Jeff Gordon was all smiles all week and prior to the race. There was lots of chatter and talk about Jeff growing a moustache, I guess it was a challenge for him, but now the biggest challenge lies ahead. Gordon looked strong most of the race, moving through the field, then disaster struck. "I just let off the throttle, and it just didn't come all the way back," Gordon said as his crew tried to repair the car. "It was probably about half-throttle, which is still enough to do a lot of damage. We're looking at what the issue is right now, what could have caused it.

Brad Keselowski passing Danica and moving on...
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"We'll get back out, but in this deal you can't afford to have issues like that."

 
Gordon, the last driver in the Chase as the second wild card, finished 35th and more than likely fell out of the championship chase.

Tough day for the Blue Oval at Chicagoland

Matt Kenseth dropped back drastically during the latter part of a run, his team prepared to change a right front shock absorber, but then Jeff Gordon crashed on Lap 188, when the throttle of the No. 24 Chevrolet stuck as he entered Turn 1 and the car slammed the outside wall. This would give the Roush team time to fix Kenseth’s car.

“A shock fell off I guess. I guess it didn’t get tight. We had a brake line get loose at Bristol and a shock fall off today so obviously we have to get to the bottom of that. He was asked about the cause and effect of the races today.. I don’t think today has anything to do with next week and going on but we have to do a better job. We didn’t have a very fast car to start with. We had a real good qualifying lap and good track position and thought we could maybe sneak out a top-10 which isn’t nearly good enough but it would still keep you in the game. When we had that problem we got so far behind, thankfully we were able to stay on the lead lap. I was in the back and couldn’t go anywhere. My car just wasn’t fast enough.”

The Pits can make or break it for a driver…

For Biffle it would be a late race bad break.. “We were really going good there at the end and we did our last stop and the car just went bad. It just got way too loose and we were hooking the bottom. I don’t even really know what happened. We were driving up through there and the car was getting better and better and it never fails – the last stop of the day we put our tires on and it went bad.” Biffle would be the highest finishing Ford, 13^th place.

Kenseth salvaged an 18th-place finish but fell to 11th in the standings, 26 points behind Keselowski and 21 ahead of Gordon in 12th. Defending champion Tony Stewart ran sixth and sits third in points, seven ahead of Denny Hamlin (16th Sunday after running out of fuel in the closing laps), Kahne was third and Clint Bowyer finished tenth.

How excited was Keselowski on winning the first race of the chase?

On his way to Victory Lane, Keselowski seemed to get lost, making a wrong turn into a swarm of fans gathered behind Victory Circle.. His car was spewing hot water out of the vent behind the hood. Track officials quickly would point him in the right direction, the celebration was on.

Keselowski heads New Hampshire with his first points lead in his Sprint Cup career.

The rest of Sprint Cup Series heads to the “Magic Mile” in New Hampshire as well this week for the second race of the Chase, another challenge for the teams and drivers in their quest for the Cup.

Brad Keselowski takes a good win home.
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RACE FACTS

Average Speed: 143.363 mph
Margin of Victory: 3.171
Time of Race: 02:47:37
Lead Changes: 16
Cautions: 67-71, 102-105, 150-157, 189-194