Wednesday, October 19th 'What If' Question

There's an age old debate that continues to rage on: Cup drives competing in the Nationwide Series.

This debate though isn't about should they run in the lower series but why would they. This past August when Brad Keselowski broke his ankle testing his NSCS car it forced him to sit out of his No. 22 Discount Tire Dodge on Saturday's. Incredibly though, Keselowski won two Cup races in August and skyrocketed from 21st to 11th in points and made the Chase.

His performance made yours truly and others again state that Cup drivers concentrating solely on Cup perform better than those who pull double duty. For instance: Jimmie Johnson has won the last five straight Sprint Cup Series championships, not just because he's a good driver and has a good team but because no one has tunnel vision like he does. Tony Stewart, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch and Jeff Gordon all won titles before Johnson and they too run very limited NNS races if none at all.

Focus, it's all about focus. Winning a Cup title should be a driver's main focus, not just winning races in any series. Sure, drivers like Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch have competed and contended as threats for the Cup title while running the NNS, but they haven't won the title. And almost doesn't count in NASCAR. Ironically, Edwards, Harvick, Busch and Keselowski haven't won the Cup title but have all won a NNS title over the last few seasons.

Keselowski, even with a broken ankle, was on fire during the weeks that he was able to worry just about his Sprint Cup effort. Now that he's made the Chase and has gone back running on Saturday's, he's remained in the top 10 in points but hasn't won a race since and time will tell if he'll win the championship.

But ...

What if Brad K. hadn't broken his ankle & didn't sit out NNS, would he still have had month of August he did & made the Chase? #NASCAR

@RobBlount Wow. Tough question. I think he still could have had that August without the broken ankle though, but no way to tell.

Jennifer Lynn Tobin (via Facebook) For sure! :)

Jose L Acero (via Facebook) I still believe that BradK has the August he had regardless of the injury happening or not! It made it that special by having is ankle broken.

Dustin Parks (via Facebook) I'm not sure, that's a really tough question to answer. Could we have anticipated Denny Hamlin to have the season he had last year following ACL surgery? It's along the same lines. We didn't expect Hamlin to have that success, and certainly didn't expect Keselowski to have his success. My answer is simply no answer, because like Hamlin in 2010, it was the card he was dealt, and he dealt with it the best way possible...bring all the attention to him for good reasons, and not because of his injury.

Nancy Nuce (via Facebook) I think it's possible that the ankle injury woke BK up to the fact that if he didn't perform, he could be on the way out. I think it focused his attention and made him put forth a better effort. That combined with the fact that they started going back to tracks they had been to once already and had notes to go by, worked to improve his performance. It also didn't hurt that Kurt threw a fit over improving the equipment till Penske did something about it. I don't think sitting out NNS had much to do with it other than I think Brad realized that he needed to perform in Cup more than he needed to perform in NNS.