BK Racing has caused 10 of 23 caution flags this year. (Getty) Consider our Takeaways feature to be the home of our random and sometimes intelligent musings. Sometimes the post may have a theme. Sometimes it may just be a mess of unrelated thoughts. Make sure you tweet us your thoughts after the race or email your post-race rants via the link in the signature line below.
• BK Racing is hitting the wall for a high average so far in 2017. After Gray Gaulding and Corey LaJoie each caused caution flags in Sunday’s race at Auto Club Speedway, the team kept up its proficiency at slowing down Cup Series races.
[Related: Kyle Larson wins at Fontana]
Including the cautions caused in Sunday’s race, BK cars driven by LaJoie (five races), Gaulding (four) and Joey Gase have been involved in 10 of the 23 cautions directly caused by cars crashing or having mechanical issues. Yes, two of the 39 (or 40) cars in a Cup field in the five weekends so far this season have created over 43 percent of applicable caution flags.
That ain’t good.
LaJoie has been a prime offender. While he wasn’t responsible for a caution at Atlanta, he’s had incidents in all five Cup races so far this season. And the streak — if you want to call it that — extends to six if you count his bump of Reed Sorenson in their Daytona 500 qualifying race.
BK is a low-budget team that constantly runs at the back of the Cup Series pack. Aside from being competitive, crashing every week isn’t exactly a good financial decision either. But incidents tend to happen more often with inferior equipment and inexperienced drivers. BK has both.
Gaulding and LaJoie entered the 2017 season with two Cup Series starts each. But the inexperience goes further than that. Gaulding has just 15 starts in the Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series while LaJoie has 20. BK may be paying the literal price for their drivers’ lack of seat time.
• What a comeback by Brad Keselowski and his No. 2 team. After sustaining serious damage right after the start of the race and spinning with a flat tire, Keselowski fell a lap down. But with a patched-up car, he came back to finish second.
The damage happened when Denny Hamlin didn’t get going at the start of the race and Keselowski (who was behind Hamlin) got pushed by Ryan Newman and Kevin Harvick into Hamlin.
Keselowski looked like he was going to salvage a decent day before the spate of late caution flags. But thanks to the restarts, decent turned into pretty damn good as he drove his way through the field with a car that still had good short-run speed.
“I’m glad I’ve got the race on DVR so I can see it, but the last few restarts were obviously key for us,” Keselowski said. “We seemed to get settled into about 10th there, maybe seventh or eighth and just executed the last few restarts. Good pit calls and so forth and good timing with the yellows, so we caught a few breaks for sure and made good adjustments to our car to make up for the damage, so it takes a little bit of everything, a little bit of execution, good work by the team and a little bit of luck on the last few yellows.”
• Matt Kenseth got turned by Martin Truex Jr. exiting turn 2 on lap 186 and smashed incredibly hard into the inside wall.
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It’s the second-straight week that Kenseth had an incredibly hard hit into the wall. After the impact, Kenseth radioed his team that he was okay, but “not as okay as last week.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just didn’t do the best job getting through the gears and I think [Jamie McMurray] got snuck outside of me, so I was trying to leave room for him on the top and then I just got hit in the left rear quarter panel off of Turn 2 and got spun out and I was just kind of along for the ride.”

Did Kenseth undergo NASCAR’s new concussion protocol? The testing typically takes about 15 minutes and he was out of the infield care center awfully quickly after that vicious hit.
• Race-winner Kyle Larson leads the points standings by 29 over second-place Chase Elliott. After Fontana in 2016, the top five drivers in the standings were separated by 25 points.
The addition of stages to NASCAR races in 2017 has increased the number of points available. Thus, points are at less of a premium than they were a year ago. Don’t be surprised to see the gaps between spots in the standings continue to be much larger than they were at corresponding points a year ago.
Larson (243 points) also has nearly twice the points of Phoenix winner Ryan Newman (123). Newman is in 11th in the standings. In 2016, you had to go all the way past 19th in the standings through the first five races to find a driver who had approximately half the points the points leader did.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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