Heat races set the tone for Sunday's NASCAR All Star Race

By virtue of winning the pole on Friday, Brad Keselowski was going to start from the lead no matter what happened on Saturday but he went out and validated the speed with a victory in the first All-Star Race heat.

Christopher Bell just visibly looks like the fastest car on the property all weekend and validated that with a victory in the second All-Star Race heat, too.

First, Keselowski delivered a defensive clinic in the first heat as he needed to fend off both William Byron and Ross Chastain on a tire disadvantage but did so successfully. Keselowski remained committed to the top as his two challengers each burned off their tires trying to pedal around him on the bottom.

Some of that was just a byproduct of the well-documented challenges this car has with passing on short tracks but it is also just a very competitive RFK Racing No. 6 Ford Mustang Dark Horse.

“Those guys were running hard and that’s what they’re supposed to do,” Keselowski said. “It’s always a battle on these short tracks to have the right balance between driving the car hard enough to stay up front, but not driving it too hard to run the tires off of it and that’s part of the challenge of being a race car driver and I welcome it.”

For what it’s worth, it’s not like clean air meant everything because James Small kept Chase Briscoe out on old tires in the second heat and Bell just blew his figurative doors off.

“So it seems like, if you stay out, you really, really, really need to keep the lead,” Bell said. “And it seems like we saw the same thing in heat race one, where Brad was able to win the race on the old tires, but Tyler Reddick who had old tires fell way back.

“So yeah, I mean it’s a very, very, tough decision and I’m thankful that I’m not in the crew chief’s box because it’s tough. And whatever you do, your opponents are going to do the opposite.”

With that said, Bell also thinks track position will be flipped a lot this year, and that the timing of cautions may ultimately be the biggest factor into the results.

“I think it's going to come down to the yellow flags, who pits at the right time and being on the winning side of the strategy,” Bell said. “And, there's no way to tell what the winning strategy is going to be until it plays out.”

Of note, Denny Hamlin was pretty well off the pace in both green flag runs of the second heat and will need Joe Gibbs Racing to make a pretty big set-up swing overnight.