Fan's Eye View ~ Through Good Finishes, Keselowski Finds Frustration
3/12/2013
Jim Fitzgerald
As the 2013 Sprint Cup Series season
has opened, so has the can of good finishes for the driver of the No. 2 Miller
Lite Ford. With finishes of fourth at
Daytona, fourth at Phoenix, and a third place recently at Las Vegas, Keselowski
finds himself in the best start to a season he has ever had. It is far better than how he started last
season as well. Keselowski is twenty positions
higher in the point standings than he was at this same point a season ago. You would think he would be smiling ear to
ear.
But that is not the case.
“The last three weeks, really the
last two weeks, and I’m sure when I get home tonight I’m going to go home and
throw some pillows around and punch some things,” Keselowski said. “We’ve had a
shot at winning all three races and have come up short, whether it is
circumstances or bad luck or today just a little bit of execution.”
Two seasons ago, Keselowski really
broke through with three wins and ten top five finishes. Last season, he followed it up with five wins
and thirteen top five spots. You would
think that a guy with Keselowski’s résumé would be happy ripping off three top
fives to start this young season, and while he is not exactly mad about it, he
isn’t doing cartwheels, either.
So what is the difference?
Maybe it is that one extra line on
that résumé that was not there before.
You know, that one line that reads something
like “2012 Sprint Cup Series Champion.”
Maybe that’s it.
“Yeah, I want to win,” Keselowski stated
after he had finished third at Las Vegas on Sunday. “It is a different perspective because I'm
not happy with a top 5. I want to win.“
This came from the guy who won his
first race at Talladega in 2009 as an extreme underdog. The race was hotly contested, moved were made
and at the end of the day, Keselowski was in the winner’s circle, and Carl
Edwards was in the fence, literally.
Edwards and Keselowski have a well-documented history, including Edwards
returning the favor on Keselowski when he sent the Michigan driver flying into
the catch fence at Atlanta in 2010.
They are both under the Ford banner now and
seem to have put their differences aside.
In fact it was Keselowski who gave Edwards a push in the closing restart
which send Edwards to the lead and the eventual win at Phoenix.
Perhaps the fire that burns inside Keselowski
is so strong that nothing will ever be good enough. We all saw as he celebrated winning the 2012
Championship on ESPN with a giant glass of beer. He may have finally relaxed a little bit in
those moments, maybe even in the days that followed, but the focus for the 2013
most assuredly returned very quickly, and was most likely compounded by the
switch from one manufacturer to another.
When it came to the end of the race on Sunday
in Las Vegas, Keselowski’s focus was never in question. It was more a matter of execution.
“Never ever give up. Never give up. This team
doesn’t and we didn’t today. You get a good run like we did and that is a
product of that effort. I thought we had some really good speed there at the
end. I almost want another yellow to race the 5 and the 20. Matt (Kenseth) did
a great job executing the restarts really well. We were so close.”
Close enough?
Maybe not.
One of the things that might be eating as Keselowski the most is that
fact that he has three those three top five finishes, the only driver to begin
the year with that stat, and he is still not the series point leader. Jimmie Johnson holds that sport, a mere five
points over Keselowski, by his finishes of first, second, and seventh. But if Keselowski continues to knock off the
top five finishes, the wins will most assuredly come. In order to win a race, you need to be in
position to win a race, a place Keselowski has been for the past three weeks.
“Once you get a day to cool off from it,”
Keselowski said, “you say, ‘wow, that's really good, three top fives, that's how I'd have wanted to start the year’. But with the way I finished last year, I
wanted to win. I wanted to win all three of these races, and I'm not happy
unless we can do that.”
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