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Geoffrey Harris20 Oct 2014
NEWS

MOTORSPORT: Penske Fords now rule in NASCAR

He won the IndyCar title this year, has the two form drivers in NASCAR, and he’s entering Australian racing next year.

11 wins in 32 Sprint Cup races — four in the past six
In case anyone in Australia needed a reminder of the might of Roger Penske’s racing operations ahead of the American’s entry to V8 Supercars next year by taking control of Dick Johnson’s team, he’s won another NASCAR race in the US today.

That’s The Captain’s 11th victory in 32 rounds of this year’s Sprint Cup, in which 43 cars race in every event.

It was his fourth win in the six rounds so far of the Chase for the Sprint Cup title.

And it’s on top of having already won the IndyCar championship this year with Australian driver Will Power. In other words, Penske could become the only team owner to win the two major American championships in the same year.

Today’s victorious driver in the NASCAR race at Talladega, Alabama, was Brad Keselowski - just a week after he was fined US$50,000 for scuffles on and off the track at Charlotte, North Carolina. Keselowski, who won the Sprint Cup for Penske two years ago in a Dodge, has now won six times this season in a Ford, the most victories of any driver, while teammate Joey Logano has five wins this year.

The pair have won two races each in the Chase and are among eight drivers left from the original 16 in the “play-offs” for the title.

The others still in the hunt over the remaining four rounds are Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin (Joe Gibbs Toyotas), Kevin Harvick (Stewart-Haas Chevrolet), Ryan Newman (Richard Childress Chevrolet), Jeff Gordon (Hendrick Chevrolet) and Carl Edwards (Roush Ford).

Australia’s Marcos Ambrose ran as high as second at Talladega before winding up eighth in his Richard Petty Motorsports Ford, his second best finish in 12 Cup starts at the notorious superspeedway. His best was fourth on debut.

Ambrose is 23rd in the NASCAR points and next year will return to the V8 Supercar Championship, in which he won the 2003-04 titles, to drive for the new union of Dick Johnson Racing and Penske, with the latter owning 51 per cent of the Ford team.

Danica Patrick led seven of the 194 laps at Talladega towards the end of the race but dropped to 19th at the finish.

Hendrick Motorsports, the dominant NASCAR team until Penske’s surge this year, saw the championship hopes of a big-name trio (six-times champion Jimmie Johnson, the sport’s most popular driver Dale Earnhardt Junior and Kasey Kahne) erased today.

Johnson led the most laps, 84, but the bonus points from that were not enough to keep him in the Chase. He finished 24th.

Joe Gibbs Toyota star Kyle Busch was another eliminated.

Keselowski was at the rear of the field after damage at one-third distance but came through to take the lead and narrowly defeat Kenseth, one of his combatants at Charlotte, and another Toyota driver, Clint Bowyer.

“Talladega is the scariest of the three races in the [restrictor-plate] bracket,” Keselowski said.

“You have to catch breaks and make your own breaks. We didn’t give up. I got a lot of help from my teammate Joey Logano - and wow. To win here is really a privilege,” he stated.

Tony Stewart, fined $25,000 for a skirmish with Keselowski last week just two months after killing Kevin Ward Junior in a sprintcar race, only got a start at Talladega because he’s a past champion and finished four laps down in 34th.

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Written byGeoffrey Harris
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