Fiery firsts: How an intense 2014 playoffs set the tone for elimination era etiquette

The desperation, drama and seemingly daily madness that defined the 2014 Cup Series playoffs naturally revolved around a chaos agent instead of its champion.

In the first edition of those elimination rounds, Kevin Harvick would take his first and only crown in NASCAR‘s premier series.

But the main character of the 2014 playoffs undoubtedly was Brad Keselowski, whose iconoclastic and formidable spirit embodied the sport‘s sea change in choosing a champion.

The Team Penske star made a breathtaking move to win the opener at Chicagoland Speedway and then stayed firmly in the spotlight as NASCAR careened through an emotional 10-race thrill ride that would reshape how drivers, fans and teams understood the limits of competition.

As situations got heated, they always seemed to involve Keselowski.

He uncovered the unbridled ire of two Cup champions who uncharacteristically lost their cool when triggered by Keselowski‘s opportunistic aggression and ruthlessness — traits that quickly were recognized as necessary for playoff advancement.

In perhaps the biggest surprise of a 10-race saga jammed with jaw-dropping plot twists, Keselowski was pushed to victory in a must-win scenario at Talladega Superspeedway by Matt Kenseth, who had put the 2012 champion in a nationally televised headlock a week earlier.

RELATED: Vote for top moment in elimination era

Keselowski admittedly lurched through a new and unfamiliar way of chasing a championship in auto racing, and that acclimation for the entire field would be the overarching theme in navigating one of the most unexpected and unpredictable stretches in NASCAR history.

“That 2014 season was everybody getting to understand the system in real time,” Keselowski said. “You read the rules and all that, but you didn’t really fully understand how it would change the behaviors until you actually saw it.

“I think there were definitely some behavioral changes in the garage and in the sport that are due to the playoffs. We all needed a rep through it to see what that would be. It changed our sport. There’s no way of saying it didn’t.”

Within a few years, the playoffs that introduced the stomach-churning term “cutoff races” had permeated the regular season. A no-holds-barred perspective emerged that extended the boundaries on what now could be considered fair game in “hard racing.”

But as the 2014 season concluded, there was a sense of incredulity that the overhauled championship model was delivering as it had been drawn up: To produce so-called “Game 7 moments” with uncanny regularity in a pressure-packed environment that Jeff Gordon described as “incredibly intense.”

“Every race is exciting,” Denny Hamlin said with a touch of wonder before the 2014 season finale. “Every race, it comes down to a restart or something. This is the best thing that’s happened to this sport in a really long time.”

The championship race was an unlikely foursome of Hamlin, Harvick, Ryan Newman and Joey Logano, who says 2014‘s magnitude only has grown since.

“It was probably the biggest change in our sport from a sporting side of things, from how you win a championship, that we’ve ever seen,” Logano said recently. “More do-or-die moments, more ‘back-up-against-the-wall, got-to-make-it happen’ moments.”

Here were five of those moments from the 10 races that changed NASCAR forever:

Splitting the middle to raise the curtain at Chicago: It would seem quaint (and largely forgotten) several races later, but Keselowski‘s first major gamble of the 2014 playoffs wasn‘t controversial in the slightest.

When the 2012 champion charged to the lead down the middle at Chicagoland Speedway by splitting Harvick and winless rookie Kyle Larson (who raced with reckless abandon in a backup car and battled Harvick and Jeff Gordon despite an ominous tire rub), it foreshadowed the lengths to which drivers would go for the glory.

“Today was about as much of a statement as you can make on a Week 1,” Keselowski said after winning consecutive Cup races for the first time in his career and raising his series-leading win total to five.

The brilliant pass punctuated a race that was the most eventful playoff opener since NASCAR created “the Chase” 10 years earlier.

Title contenders Kasey Kahne, Matt Kenseth and Kurt Busch either sped or spun in the pits. Keselowski and Harvick overcame loose wheels. Ryan Newman, a winless underdog, rallied from three laps down for a 15th-place finish while another surprise challenger, Aric Almirola, went from battling for a top five to suddenly falling out with an engine failure.

With 16 playoff drivers to monitor (four more than before), their boom-or-bust fortunes incessantly flickered over the course of 400 miles and overtaxed the brains of competitors and onlookers at full capacity.

There was so much to process, the race‘s cerebral winner, always known for his sense of anticipation, had yet to contemplate what his win would mean by locking into the next round (a benefit that now is seen as a virtual given).

“I guess that’s something we have to sit down and discuss as a group,” Keselowski said. “I can’t really say I’ve thought about that in detail.”

Four angry men at Charlotte: In what would become a recurring theme, a Harvick victory would be overshadowed by everything that happened immediately after the checkered flag at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

It started when Hamlin brake-checked Keselowski on the cooldown lap, retaliating for contact on the green-white-checkered restart that ended the race.

Keselowski responded by first trying to spin Hamlin and then rammed Matt Kenseth at the entrance to the pits — which inadvertently resulted in rear-ending an unwitting Tony Stewart, who retaliated by going full speed in reverse to crumple the hood of Keselowski‘s No. 2 Ford.

The chaos somehow wasn‘t over. In one of the most memorable images of the playoffs, Keselowski nonchalantly was walking through the garage when Kenseth suddenly came flying out of the darkness to wrap his rival in a bear hug as team members and NASCAR officials tried to separate them.

RELATED: How elimination playoffs shaped the sport today

The normally mild-mannered Kenseth was apoplectic about the heavy contact after he had unfastened his safety devices.

“He clobbered me at 50 (mph),” Kenseth said. “If you want to talk about it as a man, do that, but to try and wreck someone on the race track, come down pit road with other cars and people standing around with seat belts off and drive in the side of me. It’s inexcusable. He is a champion. He‘s supposed to know better than that.”

Keselowski was outraged at Kenseth for an incident under yellow after they‘d tangled on the prior restart.

“I figured if we are going to play car wars, I‘ll join, too,” said Keselowski, who was desperate for a decent finish after a blown tire resulted in a 36th-place finish during the previous week‘s Round 2 opener at Kansas Speedway. “You know those guys can dish it out, but they can‘t take it. And I gave it back to them and now they want to fight. I don’t know what‘s up with that.”

NASCAR would issue modest penalties — a $50,000 fine and four-race probation for Keselowski; $25,000 and a four-race probation for Stewart — in perhaps acknowledging its stars were in a new world where good behavior was at times untenable.

The unlikeliest ally at Talladega: With his star driver‘s title bid on the ropes, team owner Roger Penske offered some wisdom entering a cutoff race at NASCAR‘s most treacherous track.

“Let’s just go move on,” Penske told Keselowski the night after the Charlotte fracas with Kenseth. “Put it in the rearview mirror.”

It was sage advice: Kenseth literally was in Keselowski‘s rearview mirror as the laps wound down at Talladega.

Keselowski, who had started from the rear because of unapproved adjustments and battled intently to reach the front after 500 miles, watched every move that Kenseth made as the No. 20 Toyota built a head of steam heading to the white flag.

“You can’t drive Talladega without looking in the mirror,” Keselowski said. “I kind of laughed appreciating the irony. It was funny how this racing world works out. I don’t know why it seems like every week, there’s either a fight in the garage or a mishap or something like that happens, those two cars and people end up together, whether parked in the garage area, or on the race track for the win in the closing laps at Talladega. I don’t know why that happens. I got a chuckle out of that personally.

“I didn’t feel uncomfortable in the least bit. It just so happened to be that Matt was leading his lane, and his lane had the best run at the end. I came down and blocked it. That was enough to seal our fate as a winner, seal his fate as second. It’s kind of funny to me personally how that stuff works out.”

This was a Kenseth push welcomed by Keselowski.

It ensured both drivers advanced to the next round in a case of the strangest of bedfellows at a track whose fickle draft often produces bizarre pairings — but rarely so wacky as this.

“Hoping to spin him out,” Kenseth deadpanned when reminded by third-place finisher Clint Bowyer that he helped Keselowski win. “When it comes down to the end of the race at Talladega, it’s not like you can be, ‘All right, I’m going to do this.’ You have to do what’s best for your best finish. … That’s where I had to put my car for my best chance at the best finish. It’s just how it turned out.”

A fierce battle and then brawl at Texas: Sporting a busted lip, a puffy eye and a bloody cheek, an unrepentant Keselowski had no wounds to his pride as he again defended his actions against stars who accused him of racing beyond the pale under intense playoff pressure.

His injuries occurred when Keselowski was shoved by Harvick into Jeff Gordon, who grabbed the blue and white fire suit and touched off a free-for-all that resulted in $135,000 in fines and suspensions for four members of Gordon‘s team.

It started when Keselowski, again on the brink of elimination after a 31st-place finish in the Round 3 opener at Martinsville Speedway, aggressively tried to fill a gap on a restart. He collided with Gordon in a three-way battle for the lead with race winner Jimmie Johnson during the first of two overtime restarts.

Gordon, who finished 29th after being on the cusp of racing for a fifth championship, remained hot enough afterward to confront Keselowski, who tried to walk away. The melee was ignited by the push from Harvick, who later said, “If you‘re going to drive like a madman, you‘d better be willing to take a few punches. You‘re the problem.”

Though he threw no hands, Gordon was happy to hurtle more invective at Keselowski. “I don‘t know how he‘s ever won a championship, and I‘m just sick and tired of it,” Gordon said. “That‘s why everyone is fighting him. You can‘t have a conversation with him. He gets himself in this position, and he has to pay the consequences. That kind of stuff is just uncalled for and I‘m not going to stand for it.”

VIDEO: Watch the Texas brawl between Gordon, Keselowski

Just as at Charlotte, Keselowski calmly took the verbal shots. He returned fire with a well-reasoned justification that other driving contemporaries who lacked his gumption permanently lost their Cup rides because they were too deferential.

“I’ve gone through these battles before and come out stronger, and I’ll go through them again,” Keselowski said. “But what I’m not going to do is back down. I’m not going to get in the spot where I tried to be exactly what they all wanted me to be, because what they want me to be is a loser, and I’m not here to lose. I’m here to win. That means I’m going to have to drive my car, harder, stronger, faster than everybody out there. That’s what I feel like I did today.

“I’d rather have enemies in NASCAR than have friends and be sitting at home. ... I came here to race, not to fight. I raced as hard as I could, and these guys just didn‘t like it. I’ll be back next week, and they’ll have to face it. That’s not in their interest, just like it’s not in mine. If what I did was so wrong to those individuals, then they should race me back that same way. They have that ability, and I wouldn’t be mad at them if they did.”

Moral consequences at Phoenix: The body slam that secured the final spot in the inaugural title race also served as the last word in setting the ethical parameters of what was legal for playoff advancement.

Basically, virtually anything goes.

Needing one point to bump Gordon from the Championship 4, Newman tossed aside any adherence to racing etiquette. To finish in a rather pedestrian 11th place, he drilled Kyle Larson without compunction in Turn 3 of the final lap.

“I guess the only mistake I made all day was showing these guys what I’ll do on the last lap when everything is on the line,” Newman said. “I think if Kyle Larson was in my shoes, he’d have done the exact same thing. I didn’t take him out. He still finished the race. I think in a day or two, he’ll understand, if he doesn’t now.”

“It’s hard to rationalize that, but I did what I had to do and tried to keep it as clean as I possibly could. I don’t like racing that way, but there’s a lot on the line here.”

VIDEO: Watch Newman ‘punt’ Larson to get into Championship 4

There was some barely plausible justification applied by Newman, who noted Larson had “used me up” on multiple restarts in a truck race at Eldora Speedway … 15 months earlier.

“That‘s a stretch,” Denny Hamlin said with a laugh sitting beside Newman, who replied, “Well, I’m stretching it, but realistically, man, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, and that’s really what it’s all about.”

A resigned Gordon offered barely a shrug after finishing second.

“It was acceptable last week, it’s acceptable this week,” Gordon said, referring to the Keselowski move that left him apoplectic. “Don’t think that that’s not going to come back to you. I could have taken out Harvick, too, but I didn’t. I hope we taught somebody that you can race clean and still give it your best. You don‘t have to wreck people to win the championship.”

He somewhat was proven right the next week. Harvick (who had dominated in winning Phoenix) clinched the title by benefiting from a fortuitous caution to win at Homestead-Miami Speedway. This time, Newman came up a spot short in second — his best finish of a winless season.

Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is the host of the NASCAR on NBC Podcast and has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.