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Keselowski's Midwest competitors

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Keselowski's Midwest competitors
Just past the halfway point in the season, Brad Keselowski is holding onto his leader standing, one he has maintained for the past 11 races. The real test of his number one staying power will come from Midwest drivers who have a history of finishing well on the Gateway International Raceway.

Starting with Saturday night’s race at Gateway International Raceway, the next three NASCAR Nationwide Series events will be hosted by tracks that have never hosted the Cup series.

The Camping World Truck Series competes with the Nationwide Series at Gateway as well as at O’Reilly Raceway Park and the series will run on Friday at both events. The July 31st Iowa Speedway race will wrap up this trio of stand-alone races in the Nationwide Series.

Carl Edwards is gunning for Keselowski and hopes to put a dent in his advantage; Edwards iis n second place and 227 points behind Keselowski.  Edwards has never been closer to first since the series raced at Charlotte this past May, at which point he was fourth and 163 points behind Keselowski.

A Columbia, Mo. native, Edwards was the 2007 Nationwide Series champion, and has been a second half challenger during his last two seasons. This time last year Edwards was 192 points behind reigning series champ Kyle Busch and 188 behind Clint Bowyer, who eventually took the title.

Edwards has two wins at Gateway, in 2006 and ’08, and is one of three other drivers with wins here entered in Saturday’s race. Kevin Harvick is the only driver to win back-to-back races, in 2000-01. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is another two-time series champion and Reed Sorenson has multiple wins from 2005 and ’07.

Rookie of the year Justin Allgaier has raced once before at Gateway scoring an 11th place finish last year. Allgaier is the lone series-only regular, winning in Bristol and earning a pole at Nashville this year. He is currently fourth in the standings.

Steve Wallace is competing in Friday night’s Truck Series as well as in Saturday race. He is currently having one of his best second half seasons. At eighth place in the standings, Wallace has seven top-10 finishes in 18 races. His career high is nine top-10s acquired last season. He made it as high as sixth place in the standings this year and has spent 10 weeks inside the top 10. Wallace has never gotten a top-10 finish at Gateway and will be working hard to secure one Saturday. His average finish is 27.2.

Wallace’s two uncles, Kenny Wallace and Mike Wallace, will be competing against him in Saturday’s race. It’s a big weekend for the family. Kenny is the Nationwide Insurance “Driver of the Week”, and is making his 472nd start on Saturday.
Kenny has the second all-time series start, Jason Keller holds the most at 506. Kenny has four top 10 finishes at Gateway. Mike is sixth on the all-time series start list and will be making his 366th start this weekend. Mike also holds the family best finish banner in series competition after a second place finish in 2005, his best yet out of nine races

Jason Leffler wrapped up his most statistically successful season last year. He scored eight top-five finishes to match his 2009 career high and finished fourth place overall. This was his second highest final points position in his career.

Leffler was surrounded by optimism going into the 2010 season but has not delivered, especially after his 33rd place finish at Daytona. In his first nine races Leffler has only one top-10 finish, at Bristol where he came in ninth.

Leffler put a total of 15 points towards the championship from those first nine races and has an average finish of 21.7, driving rating of 77.3, and eight fastest laps. He finally tapped into his potential – or got lucky – at Darlington where he grabbed his first top-five finish of the season. This started a string of consecutive top 10s.

Leffler has recovered since his bad string of races in February and of the past nine races has somehow managed to pull himself together to get five top-10s and a spot in the top-10 points standing.

He is now at a finishing average of 13.0, a Driver Ranking of 90.0, and 47 fastest laps run. His trend of fastest races should be continue at Gateway; he is strong on this track having two top-fives and three top-10s in seven starts.

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