NASCAR Martinsville 2017 results: Brad Keselowski wins STP 500, plus full finishing order

Brad Keselowski passed Kyle Busch late in a thrilling STP 500, then outran his rival to win Sunday’s Monster Energy Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway.

Busch and Keselowski emerged as the dominant cars in the final third of the 500-lap race, exchanging the lead multiple times between themselves. After a restart following a caution caused by Martin Truex Jr.’s spin off Turn 4, Keselowski hounded Busch around the half-mile track, riding the No. 18’s car bumper for 14 laps before making the winning pass with 43 laps remaining.

It is Keselowski’s second victory of 2017, making him the first repeat winner of the season. It was also the Team Penske driver’s first win at the historic Virginia oval, NASCAR’s oldest track.

“This is awesome,” Keselowski said. “Martinsville is just one of those champion’s tracks. The guys that run well everywhere run well here, and it’s really just an honor to win here and get to compete here. This track is 70 years old and a lot of legends have won here. It feels great to be able to join them.”

Busch’s pursuit of a second straight spring Martinsville win fell short by 1.8 seconds. He led a race-high 174 laps, but said his car didn’t handle the same after pitting for four new tires during his final pit stop.

Chase Elliott finished third, Joey Logano fourth, and Austin Dillon fifth. Rounding out the top 10 were AJ Allmendinger, Clint Bowyer, Ryan Newman, Matt Kenseth, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

“Just needed a normal set of tires,” Busch said. “We put on a set of tires there at the end that weren’t the same as the ones that we took off and it just slowed the car down a minimum three-tenths that whole entire last run.

“It’s just frustrating when you come down pit road and you don’t make any changes and you bolt a set of tires on it and it goes to junk. I hate that that happened.”

Fourteen cautions slowed the race, the sixth event of the season. The rough-and-tumble race saw several notables involved in incidents brought about by Martinsville’s tight confines. Among those collected was Dale Earnhardt Jr., who had no avenue to escape when Denny Hamlin turned Danica Patrick into the outside Turn 3 wall on Lap 418. In the aftermath, Earnhardt sustained considerable damage to his car’s front end that smashed in the radiator on the No.88 Chevrolet.

Earnhardt would finish 34th in the 38-car field. It is a continuation of what has been a rough start to the season for NASCAR’s 14-time most popular driver, whose best finish is 14th and ranks 25th in points. On Sunday, Earnhardt had been running in the top 10 but was attempting to overcome a pit road speeding penalty at the time of the accident.

“I was having a good time,” he said. “But, I’m disappointed with the way we’re finishing. We’ve got to finish better than this.”

The series heads to Texas Motor Speedway for next Sunday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 500.