Martinsville tough on Busch and Keselowski

Stock car racing turned into a real contact sport at the aptly named Tums Fast Relief 500 that ran Sunday at Martinsville Speedway. By the end of the first 100 laps of the 500-lap race, nine cars had already headed for the garage. Both Kurt Busch and Brad Keselowski had trouble: Busch’s No.22 Shell/Pennzoil Dodge Charger was 14th across the finish line; Keselowski, in the No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge, was 17th. The results didn’t change Busch’s standings; he’s still eighth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, but it did drop Keselowski from third to fourth with three races left in the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup season.

Busch’s troubles started early with a Lap 8 crash on Turn One when he and Dale Earnhardt Jr. spun and Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, A.J. Allmendinger, Brian Vickers, Mike Skinner and Jeff Burton piled on. Busch was involved in three more incidents before the day was done.

“We had a little bit of everything today with our Shell/Pennzoil Dodge,” Busch said following the race. “We struggled a little bit during the middle part of the race and lost a lap, but we took the wave around, caught a caution and made it up. I really hate I got into Jeff Burton, but the 39 got into me and I got into Jeff. Paul Menard got into us and I spun out. The car was fine, but nobody would let you get to the inside. We decided to go for it on that last caution and got tires. We came in 14th and finished 14th so it was a wash. We’ll try to make up some points next week at Texas.”

Keselowski’s hopes of a top-10 finish vanished while he was running eighth on the restart for a three-lap dash for the finish following the final caution of the day. Dale Earnhardt Jr. drove Denny Hamlin’s car into the side of the Blue Deuce, sending it into a spin. Keselowski recovered quickly and finished the 500-lap race.

Afterwards, Keselowski was philosophical: “That’s racing on these short tracks. It will come back around for the Miller Lite Dodge team. We got some good racing in the middle section of the race, got the good lanes that we needed, but at the end we just didn’t catch a break. We ended up on the outside for the last few restarts and that wasn’t the place to be. That’s just this style of racing. You can’t control your own fate. The car came to us, the track came to us. The guys had a good plan. Our Miller Lite Dodge was a top-10 car. We came up a few laps short.”

Reed Sorenson had vibration trouble, this time possibly caused by an accident on Lap 65, and had to bring the No. 7 Speed Energy Dodge Charger to the garage after 77 laps.