With two wrecks in two races, Brad Keselowski sits 33rd in the NASCAR Cup Series standings.
He’s not worried.
Keselowski is 26 points from the current playoff cutoff of 16th and just 40 points out of eighth. With 24 regular-season races remaining, that’s a deficit that certainly can be overcome.
So should he be worried? And does that mean this weekend’s road-course race at Circuit of the Americas is pivotal for him?
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No and yes.
He shouldn’t be worried. But this weekend could be pivotal. If he gets spun while battling for position, he could find himself in an even bigger deficit.
"Every point matters," is what is preached by FOX Sports analyst Kevin Harvick.
With the points impacting everything from qualifying order to how the cars start when it rains (both of which can be a factor in the lineup and therefore where a team’s pit stall is for a race), a driver who's lower in points has little annoyances that can also eventually impact results.
"We started off last year in a big points hole," Keselowski said after his early exit from Atlanta. "The potential in our cars seems to have increased from where we were last year.
"For us, we want to go out and run well at COTA but everyone knows that the real metric for the season is when we get through Phoenix and Vegas."
Phoenix is a mile long and Vegas is a mile-and-a-half track. Those are more traditional tracks and they follow COTA. They will tell the teams much more about how competitive they will likely be during the season.
So Keselowski isn’t just blowing smoke when he says he’s not worried. But he’s got to hope the odds of getting involved in wrecks falls back into his favor.
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and IndyCar for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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