For the first time in 110 races, Brad Keselowski is a NASCAR Cup Series race winner. A huge accomplishment for this No. 6 team. Everyone thought it would come, but no one knew if it would for sure.
Brad Keselowski just picked up his first win at RFK Racing, his first as a driver-owner, and he will be heading to the playoffs this season. It was a nailbiter and looked like it wasn’t going to happen until about 10 laps to go in the race.
With patience and experience, Keselowski gets the win at Darlington.
Kyle Larson wins Stage 1
A very standard first stage in this Goodyear 400. Nothing wild and crazy went down. Just a lot of green flag racing and pit stops. Tyler Reddick led early in this one as the pole-sitter. However, he was soon being hassled by others.
Kyle Larson came on strong in the first stage and would eventually take the lead. Green flag pit stops allowed Ty Gibbs and Larson to jump ahead of Reddick on the pit cycle. From there, it was easy going for the 5 team.
The Terry Labonte throwback scheme looked great and it looked even better in the front of the field. Larson gets out in clean air and just goes to work whenever and wherever he is racing.
Drivers got into lap traffic and it allowed for others to make moves. Larson was just too good to pass in that opening stage. He went on to take the stage win, his seventh of the season.
Tyler Reddick gets help from his pit crew
What has been the story of the last three seasons for 23XI Racing? Pit stops. Bad pit stops, too. There have been many instances where Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace have had great performances ruined by a bad stop on pit road.
Today, Reddick’s crew actually got him positions. He was able to maintain or improve his position with fast stops and being disciplined in entering and exiting pit road. In Stage 2, it helped. Especially with the caution flags that came out.
With 62 laps to go in the second stage, John Hunter Nemechek went around. That drew a caution for cause and set up a restart. That is when things got a little squirrely. William Byron took Martin Truex Jr. and Ryan Blaney three-wide on the restart. It didn’t end well.
Blaney got put into the wall and it killed his car. Future brother-in-law Byron cost him a potential top-10 run. Stage 2 would see another caution flag come out with Zane Smith spinning out. None of that would prevent Tyler Reddick from getting the Stage 2 win, though.
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