Brad Keselowski Exits Daytona Cup Race after Bump from Kevin Harvick

DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA – JULY 07: Brad Keselowski, driver of the #2 Miller Lite Ford, is involved in an on-track incident during the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway on July 07, 2019 in Daytona Beach, Florida. Photo by Brian Lawdermilk/Getty Images

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – ‘K’ may stand for ‘Keselowski,’ but in the Twitterverse on Sunday, ‘K’ also stood for ‘karma’ where Keselowski was concerned.

Three days after spinning William Byron in Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice and later declaring that he had sent a message to the field that he wasn’t going lift if other drivers blocked him, Keselowski himself exited Sunday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway after contact from the front bumper of Kevin Harvick’s Ford sent him sideways into the outside wall.

Twitter immediately lit up with references to karma and hashtags like #dontlift.

The lap 81 wreck also hurt the cars of Harvick, Daniel Suarez, David Ragan, Daniel Hemric, and Joey Logano, but even after viewing the accident on video, Keselowski laid no blame for his demise.

“I know I was going straight one moment, and the next moment I wasn’t,” Keselowski said. “It’s unfortunate. We were all two- and three-wide racing and just got tagged from the back. I’m not sure exactly. I know we got to three-wide at the top of (turn) three, and it looks like Kevin gave me a real straight push. 

“I don’t know. It just took off on me. The Fords were working really hard to run together, and Kevin and Joey and (Ryan) Blaney and myself, I thought we were doing really good at it, but for whatever reason, the car just instantly turned there. It’s a bummer for everybody, but we’ll move on and hopefully go to the next one and be all right.”

Byron, the race runner-up after the event was shortened because of rain, may have had the last laugh. Hearing over his team radio that Keselowski had wrecked, Byron dead-panned, “That’s too bad.”