Tire trouble hits Keselowski at Phoenix – Nascar

Brad Keselowski ran into late-race trouble in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, seeing a right-rear tire unravel in the 225th of 312 laps at Phoenix International Raceway.

Keselowski, who started 19th in the 39-car field, was the victim of the latest in a series of tire troubles in the Good Sam 500, the fourth of 36 Sprint Cup races this season. The right-rear tire on his Team Penske No. 2 Ford blew out on the backstretch dogleg, littering the back portion of the 1-mile track with debris.

Keselowski, last week’s winner at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, lost at least two laps as he stopped for repairs. He wound up six laps off the pace at the finish, nursing the No. 2 car home in 29th place.

“We ran in that 10th-place range pretty much the entire race until we cut the tire,” Keselowski said. “That was unfortunate and we aren’t really sure why but there isn’t anything we can really do about it. It is hard to say really where we would have been if that hadn’t happened.”

Earlier in the event, the Richard Childress Racing Chevrolets of Ryan Newman and Paul Menard, plus the Roush Fenway Racing Ford of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. encountered tire problems. Goodyear officials said that intense brake heat had melted the tire beads (where the edge of the tire sits on the wheel), causing the rubber to separate.