NASCAR At Chicagoland: Brad Keselowski Wins 2012 Chase Opener

Here’s a look back at the results of Sunday’s GEICO 400 – NASCAR’s Chase-opening race at Chicagoland Speedway – and how each of the playoff drivers performed in the race:

Finish: 1st

Jeff Gordon entered NASCAR’s Chase thinking he had an excellent chance to finally win his fifth Sprint Cup Series title.

But those hopes took a severe hit on Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway when a broken return spring sent the Hendrick driver hard into the Turn 1 wall and placed him 35th in the final rundown – his worst finish since May.

Considering Dale Earnhardt Jr. was forced to start Sunday’s NASCAR Chase opener in the rear of the field due to an engine change, an eighth-place finish wasn’t all that bad.

But Earnhardt Jr. knows rattling off top-10 results aren’t going to be enough to become a Sprint Cup Series champion in November, and said he needs to be great – not just good. So in that sense, the Hendrick Motorsports driver said he was “not getting real excited” about his rally from the back at Chicagoland Speedway.

Tony Stewart was hoping for a repeat of last year, when a Chase-opening victory propelled him to his third NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.

But in Sunday’s Chicagoland Speedway race, which had few cautions and meant track position was everything, it wasn’t to be. Instead, Stewart was forced to settle for a hard-fought sixth-place finish.

There’s a new face atop the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series point standings.

For the first time in his career, Brad Keselowski is leading the standings – a feat he accomplished after winning Sunday’s GEICO 400 race at Chicagoland Speedway.

In front of her hometown fans at Chicagoland Speedway, Danica Patrick entered Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race expecting to finish somewhere in the top 10.

But a constantly loose-handling race car was too much to overcome and she was forced to settle for 12th. Patrick had hoped for better, considering she had many friends and family members in town for the race.

During Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Chicagoland, ESPN played a clip of someone telling Austin Dillon: “You do not help the 2 car.”

To viewers, it sounded a bit suspicious. With Sadler – the aforementioned 2 car – leaving Richard Childress Racing at the end of the season, some fans jumped to conclusions that RCR was trying to make Sadler’s championship quest more difficult.

It was a statement victory for defending NASCAR Nationwide Series champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who won Saturday’s Dollar General 300 Powered by Coca-Cola at Chicagoland Speedway and simultaneously wrested the series lead from Elliott Sadler.

The victory was Stenhouse’s fifth of the season and the seventh of his career. He crossed the finish line 2.402 seconds ahead of Kyle Busch, who fell one spot short of posting his first victory in the Nationwide car he owns.

Austin Dillon ran third, followed by Brad Keselowski and Paul Menard. Sadler finished eighth and fell from the top spot in the standings after holding it for 20 consecutive weeks. With seven races left, Stenhouse leads Sadler by nine points.

Ninth-place finisher and polesitter Joey Logano regained the lead under caution on Lap 124 for Benny Gordon’s accident in Turn 3. Logano beat Dillon off pit road by six inches and led the field to a restart.

Stenhouse lost seven spots when his car stalled in the pits and took the green flag in the 11th position but gradually worked his way back through the field. By the time the race reached Lap 150, Stenhouse had passed Sadler for the third position.

Busch grabbed the top spot shortly after the restart on lap 130 and pulled away to a lead of 1.5 seconds as Logano faded. Busch, Dillon and Stenhouse staged a three-car breakaway during that green-flag run, but a caution for Jason Bowles’ spin in Turn 3 on Lap 167 shuffled the running order.

With a 12.5-second stop for four tires and fuel, Sadler was first off pit road on Lap 168 and led Busch to a restart on Lap 172. Busch quickly reassumed the lead while Sadler dropped back to sixth by Lap 177.

Stenhouse, however, moved past Busch on Lap 180 and quickly established an advantage of more than a second.

Five-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson started the 2012 Chase exactly the way he wanted: With a pole at Chicagoland Speedway.

Johnson will lead the starting lineup for Sunday’s GEICO 400, with Aric Almirola, Matt Kenseth, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Carl Edwards rounding out the top five.

During one of the most crucial practices of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season, a miscommunication caused a collision between Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski – before they were even on the racetrack.

As Truex followed Keselowski out from the garage to pit road, both drivers were confused by a NASCAR official’s motions. Truex said the official usually puts one hand out as if to say “STOP!” But this time, the official had one hand out and one hand waving in a different direction – and Truex was confused as to what that meant.

Tony Stewart is not a psychic and he cannot predict the future (at least that’s what he claims). So if you ask the NASCAR driver to forecast racing results, you’re doing so at your own risk.

Take the British reporter who asked Stewart on Friday if he had a prediction for who would win this season’s Formula One championship.

Halfway through the season, Jeff Gordon was buried in points and his Chase prospects looked grim. Facing an uphill and seemingly impossible battle to get into the top 10, he knew the only chance he had to make the Chase was to concentrate on winning races.

That strategy paid off, as Gordon won at Pocono and finished high enough in points to snatch the final wild card spot away from Kyle Busch.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. will have the National Guard on his car for 20 races in 2013, but what company will sponsor the other 16 events?

That question remains unclear as of Friday, and Earnhardt Jr. said current sponsor Diet Mountain Dew is “going to back off a little bit” next season.

Though Danica Patrick said she had a “really good relationship” with Tony Eury Sr., the former JR Motorsports competition director who was released last week, the driver also said she understood why the team made a change.

Eury Sr.‘s exit comes as JRM is mired in a winless streak that dates back to the 2010 season and has seen both Patrick and teammate Cole Whitt struggling this year to be competitive. In 25 Nationwide Series starts in 2012, Patrick has just two top-10 finishes with a best result of eighth at Texas and she has posted nine finishes of 25th or worse.

Earlier this week, SB Nation proposed 10 different mustache options for Jeff Gordon in light of the driver’s promise to bring back his ‘90s ‘stache after making the Chase.

With more than 1,100 votes counted, it’s clear readers prefer “The Depp” mustache by an overwhelming margin. But as it turns out, Gordon’s ‘stache is probably going to look like “The Ditka.”