TALLADEGA, Ala– After the dust had settled following an intense final race in the Round of 12, two of the championship juggernauts were sent packing from the Chase following the Hellmann’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.

Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski, two of the heaviest hitters in the Chase so far, both found themselves out of the race thanks to engine issues, eliminated from the Round of 8 as a result.

For Truex, he had the fastest car in the first round, winning two out of the three events in grand style and proving to be a force to be reckoned with. As the second round began however, his fortune changed and the bad luck that had plagued the No. 78 throughout the regular season once again reared its ugly head.

A dismal run at Charlotte left Truex in a decent spot heading to Kansas, where he had one of the fastest cars on track, but a fuel nozzle problem forced the team to make multiple pit stops and threw off their groove.

He entered Talladega with a 13 point advantage ahead of the cutoff zone and he made the most of the early part of the weekend by sitting on the pole for the event. However, the gremlins returned for Truex and on lap 41 his Toyota went up in smoke, forcing him to the garage and out for the rest of the afternoon.

Truex knew he had a problem early but there was nothing he could have done to fix it.

“I just developed a vibration and I just started to lose a little bit of power.” Truex said. “Originally I thought it might have been a tire because it got worse and worse and worse until it was time to pit. Once I slowed down on pit road and felt the vibration in the engine I knew we were going to be in trouble.”

While dejected, Truex held his head high and focused on the positives on a very successful season for the single car team out of Denver.

“Definitely not the way we wanted the day  to go, not the way we wanted to go out. Proud of the effort, proud of the guys, the engines have been great all year. Just every once in awhile you’ll have a failure but it’s just unfortunate with everything on the line. It is what it is, its racing and we’ll just move on and win the last five races or whatever is left and good end to our season.”

On the other side of the dejection coin, 2012 champion Keselowski was poised to make another deep run into the postseason.

After winning four races in the regular season and tying for the overall points lead heading into the first round, he followed his regular season up with an average finish of fifth, showing the competition that he was no joke.

In the second round, he got off to a decent start at Charlotte finishing in seventh place. As the series headed to Kansas, however, trouble arose. Off turn four, Keselowski got loose while trying to pass Hamlin, spun off Hamlin’s front bumper and into the grass, damaging his car and ending his day prematurely.

Keselowski, who is no stranger to winning at Talladega or winning in a wildcard race, came to Talladega in a virtual must-win situation. Entering the weekend, Keselowski was only seven points behind the cutoff line. He qualified second and proved to have the best car in the field, leading 90 of the 188 laps of the event, passing cars in the draft with ease.

Late in the race, while leading, Keselowski reported that he had debris on the grille. As his water temperatures were rising, he let the No. 21 of Ryan Blaney by to try to remove the debris, but while they were able to remove the foreign piece from the grille, the damage had been done.

On lap 144, halfway down the backstretch, Keselowski’s engine expired. As the powerless No. 2 Ford drove back to the garage, Keselowski’s chance of another championship went up in the proverbial smoke that left the mangled engine.

Keselowski, obviously dejected, decided to look at the race from a positive standpoint.

“We came here to win and we we’re doing what needed to do to win and it just wasn’t meant to be.” Keselowski said. “We had an incredible car today, but you just got to keep pushing and we want to leave the season with the most wins and we have a great shot at that right now. With cars that ran like this one today, it will all work out. We got our whining out of the way, now we are going to go on home and get ready for next week.”

The Round of 8 has been decided and neither Keselowski nor Truex will be part of the running come next Sunday at Martinsville.

Talladega once again proved to be the wildcard of wildcards, showing that not even the fastest cars are safe and nothing is final until the drop of the checkered flag.

About the Writer

Rence Brown is Race Chaser Online’s West Coast-based correspondent, who currently resides in California and carries a deep passion for NASCAR, but is a follower of multiple forms of auto racing across multiple disciplines.

Brown, 23, is going back to school to pursue a journalism degree at Pierce College.

Email Rence at: [email protected]

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