Opportunistic Brad Keselowski seizes inaugural Nationwide win at Indy

Opportunistic Brad Keselowski seizes inaugural Nationwide win at Indy

July 28, 2012 (EDITORS: Will be updated)

By Reid Spencer

NASCAR Wire Service

SPEEDWAY, Ind. -- Taking advantage of a NASCAR penalty to Elliott Sadler, Brad Keselowski cruised to victory in Saturday's Indy 250, the inaugural appearance for NASCAR's Nationwide Series at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Keselowski beat Penske Racing teammate Sam Hornish Jr. to the finish line by 3.3 seconds after NASCAR penalized points leader Sadler for jumping the last restart of the race on Lap 83, after Kyle Busch's spin in Turn 1 brought out the fifth caution on Lap 79.

Sadler, who got a push from Richard Childress Racing teammate Austin Dillon approaching the stripe, asserted that race leader Keselowski had spun his tires coming to green.

"It's so wrong to penalize me for a mistake they made," Sadler radioed to his crew. "NASCAR just took the championship away from me. They just took the damn championship right out of our hands."

Reluctantly, Sadler served a pass-through penalty on Lap 89 and dropped behind the other lead-lap cars. Charging through traffic, Sadler finished 15th to minimize the damage to his points lead, which shrank to one point over Dillon, who finished fifth.

Ty Dillon, Austin's brother, ran third, followed by Denny Hamlin. Michael Annett finished sixth and pocketed $100,000 from Nationwide's Dash 4 Cash program. Annett, Hornish, Dillon and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (ninth Saturday) earned Dash 4 Cash eligibility for next week's race at Iowa.

Contact from Danica Patrick's Chevrolet sent Reed Sorenson spinning on Lap 39. Sorenson slid sideways, blocking the track in front of Patrick, who T-boned the unfortunate Ford. Patrick's car was demolished, and the driver who posted six top-10 finishes in seven IndyCar starts exited the Nationwide event in 35th place.

"It's just unfortunate for our day -- it's a big race, a big weekend," Patrick said. "We were just trying to pick 'em off one by one (Patrick was running 20th at the time) . . . We just got shuffled back on that restart there (on Lap 22), picked the wrong line and got shuffled back.

"I got into the center of the corner, I got pretty close, and I might have tapped him -- I'm not sure. He was slowing it down quite a bit, so I didn't mean to take him out. . . . I was trying to go around him, and when I went around him, I think he hooked right, maybe, or something like that. Just a bummer. There was plenty racing left to work with, but what can you do?"