Motor sports: Johnson surges past Keselowski for Texas win

NASCAR Xfinity Series driver Brad Keselowski (22) wins the O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway. It just didn’t have it Sunday in a little bit of return to normalcy.

Other than a few frustration maybe for Goodyear, but that can happen with no Saturday practice. NASCAR headed to the Lone Star State for the running of the AAA Texas 500, the second race in the Eliminator Round of the Chase.

Of the 334 laps available to lead in today’s Chase race at Texas Motor Speedway, Brad Keselowski lead 312. The scholarship recipients received a VIP experience including a tour of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series garage, pace vehicle rides and meet-and-greets with Team Chevy program manager Alba Colon and Sprint Cup driver Ryan Newman.

Next week, NASCAR will go to the desert for the Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 at Phoenix global Speedway in Arizona. But he recovered to get back up to second by lap 143.

Until Johnson’s charge at the end, the race belonged to Keselowski.

Carl Edwards, a three-time Texas victor and Chase contender who starts 13th, isn’t sure he understands where the line is and what kind of repercussions there could be for on-track incidents after the penalty against his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate. Jones followed up an impressive qualifying run in the #20 JGR Toyota he’ll drive until Kenseth returns with a respectable12th place finish, capping off another strong weekend for the young driver favored to win the NASCAR Truck Series championship.

For Keselowski and Logano, who were in this thing up close, not so much.

“I just kept pressure on him”, said Johnson, who was eliminated from the Chase in the opening round.

“I guess I don’t know. It just wasn’t in the plans today”. “He did a nice job of driving wide, and his auto wasn’t driving as easily as it was beforehand”. “You can beat yourself up after pouring your heart out all day long on the race track”.

Johnson reacted by saying most folks tend to label Kenseth as boring; suddenly the guy’s “on fire”.

But Matt Kenseth wrecked Logano late in the race, in apparent retaliation for Logano’s taking out Kenseth at Kansas two weeks earlier.

Prior to Johnson’s pass, Sunday clearly belonged to “Bad Brad”. Adjustments were made and the race changed. He finally returned to the race, finishing 40th and 66 laps behind victor Jimmie Johnson.

He just wanted to race. He led 11 laps.

“We led 300-some laps and these debris yellows always favor someone and it wasn’t our day for them to favor us”, said Keselowski. “We’ll go to work and try and figure it out”. Everyone likes a good controversy and even a nasty rivalry, but there comes a point when it is time to get back to racing.

With a victory, Keselowski could have clinched a berth in the four-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup final round in the season finale on November 22. Or Keselowski and Kevin Harvick trying to win another title, or Kyle Busch coming back from a devastating injury to win it all. Keselowski just possibly had his best chance to have a shot at the 2015 Sprint Cup championship slip through his fingers.