#2- Brad Keselowski escaped uninjured ‘ ‘still upright,’ in his words ‘ after a scary crash Tuesday during an organizational test for NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams at Watkins Glen International. Keselowski had just turned a session-topping 124.572 mph on his 18th lap of the day, best of the 14 drivers participating on the freshly repaved 2.45-mile road course. But just after registering that speed, the rear brakes on his Team Penske No. 2 Ford failed, sending Keselowski’s car nose-first into the tire-pack barrier in Turn 1 at the end of the long frontstretch. ‘Just the pedal went to the floor,’ Keselowski said. ‘It means that you’ve lost brakes on one of the corners. At a track like this, you’re already on the edge. You don’t have any room or margin for something to fail. That’s the way it is.’ The wreck occurred midway through Tuesday’s afternoon session on the first day of a two-day organizational test before the series’ Aug. 7 Cheez-It 355 at the Glen. Keselowski was evaluated and released from the infield care center, no worse for wear, but crew chief Paul Wolfe still lamented the circumstances. He tweeted video of the heavy crash and a photo of his bent steering wheel on social media to illustrate the wreck’s severity. Team Penske unloaded a reserve #2 Ford ‘ a car that’s been a backup at several events this season ‘ which it planned to put on the track Wednesday.(NASCAR.com)(7-26-2016)
UPDATE: #2-Brad Keselowski considers road courses as the most dangerous tracks the Sprint Cup teams compete on and not everyone would have survived the hit he took Tuesday in testing. Keselowski, who said a brake line was improperly installed, causing him to lose the brakes going into Turn 1 while testing at Watkins Glen, walked away from the accident where he was running around 165 mph when he tried to hit the brakes and hit a wrapped tire barrier in front of a steel guard rail while going more than 80 mph. ‘I don’t know that I have all the answers,’ Keselowski said Friday prior to practice at Pocono Raceway. ‘The answers I do have is that there are only so many of those hits you’re going to take before someone gets killed. That’s the way it is. It’s not something I’m comfortable with, but I think as a sport there’s a lot of different ways to look at it. At the end of the day, I’m still standing here. Odds are, that if 100 people take that hit, one or two are not going to be standing here anymore.’
Keselowski wasn’t angry in making the comments, as he held more of a matter-of-fact tone. The Team Penske driver broke his left ankle in a 2011 crash at Road Atlanta and believes the road courses are more dangerous than the high-banked superspeedways of Talladega and Daytona. ‘In general, I’m not comfortable with tracks that have runoffs that lead to very harsh angles,’ Keselowski said. ‘That’s certainly the situation that track has, always had it. The road courses remain the most dangerous tracks in motorsports for good reason because of that. ‘¦ To some point, we have signed up for a certain level of risk. That’s right on the edge of what’s acceptable risk. I think every driver has their own line.’(ESPN.com)
