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TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Brad Keselowski hasn't run well enough this season to make one think he belongs in the NASCAR Cup championship conversation. He does have three victories, but two of those came early in the year. He has led fewer than 8 percent of laps. While he has 13 top-5s in 31 races, it has been a rare moment when those appeared as potential wins. But here he is on the brink of at least having a shot at the 2017 NASCAR Cup title. He knew before the playoffs even started he faced at least two must-win situations. He won the first Sunday by capturing the Alabama 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR's longest oval at 2.66-miles. Entering the race 10th in the standings and knowing he will probably run mediocre next week at Kansas, Keselowski earned an automatic bid to the semifinal round of eight thanks to his victory. He faces his next must-win situation in two weeks as he will have to repeat his feat from April when he won at Martinsville Speedway. While two races follow that event to determine the four championship-contending drivers in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, there's nothing to think that Keselowski and his Team Penske team will score enough points in the two races (Texas and Phoenix) that follow Martinsville. Don't hate, Blue Deuce fans, this theory. Listen to your driver and crew chief: Crew chief Paul Wolfe: "I've told the guys all along, that this was going to be our path to make it to Homestead, and that was going to be winning Talladega. And I told Brad that again after the race at Charlotte last week on pit road when we didn't have the results we wanted [in finishing 15th]. We ran very poorly for what was expected out of us at Charlotte. And I told him, 'You know, we've got to go to Talladega and win.'" Keselowski: "Martinsville at this moment as it stands I would say is a must‑win for us, and we know that going in. We tested there, and we feel like that's the type of track that we have a lot of strength for. At this point, yes, but ... that could change. You hate to say that; it's still three weeks away, right [it's actually two]?" Wolfe will say it. "You've got to be realistic about where you're at right now, where our cars are at speed‑wise, what our strengths and weaknesses are, and you've got to do your best to capitalize when you can," Wolfe said. "Absolutely I look at Martinsville as we need to go there and win, and if we can do that, we'll race for a championship."  Keselowski won a mess of a race at Talladega, which at least didn't feature the scary views of upside-down cars that it has seen in recent years. But, oh, was there carnage. The marathon lasted 3 hours, 47 minutes of actual racing time and another 35 minutes for three red flags to clean up multicar accidents. Only 14 cars were running at the finish. Only four of the 12 playoff drivers -- and one of them (Kyle Larson) wasn't even running at minimum speed -- made it to the checkered flag. "This year in particular we've seen more carnage on the mile‑and‑a‑halves than I think we did last year, and I think there's ebbs and flows to that that are hard for me to explain or make any sense out of because I felt like the last two years there wasn't a lot of crashes," Keselowski said. "I don't know exactly what to make of that, but I was glad to come out victorious despite it." Keselowski was the only playoff driver in the top-five, while Denny Hamlin finished sixth, Larson 13th and Matt Kenseth 14th. The rest of the playoff drivers were already on their way home when the checkered flag fell about 20 minutes before sundown, with Jimmie Johnson holding a seven-point lead on Kyle Busch for eighth place with one race remaining (1.5-mile Kansas next week), where eight drivers advance and four will be eliminated. "A couple of more crashes, we might have won," quipped Kenseth, who sits 10th in the standings, eight behind Johnson. "I have no idea where we are -- I saw a lot of them [in the playoffs] crashed. ... The day could have been worse." For Keselowski, he stayed out of all the trouble. His main issue, forcing him to pit and drop to 30th with about 30 laps left, was a crummy radio that couldn't pick up anything outside the frontstretch. Keselowski didn't want to pit, but Wolfe felt he had to fix the radio, that Keselowski needed to be able to hear his spotter if he wanted to win the race. Keselowski owned the lead with three laps remaining, and while Ryan Newman passed him on the restart, Keselowski had the strongest car and a lot of talent, getting a push to the win. Newman placed second, followed by Trevor Bayne, Joey Logano and Aric Almirola. "We lost a few playoff cars here and there in each wreck," Hamlin said. "You're looking around and me and Brad are the only two that are left that are playoff cars. You knew it was going to be wild for those other guys that didn't care about winning. You got the finish we thought we'd have. "It's good they moved it at least to the middle race [of the quarterfinal round] so nobody knew where they were. Now you've got to go to Kansas and perform." Keselowski doesn't have to perform at Kansas thanks to his sixth career restrictor-plate win. "You don't just get lucky four times," Wolfe said, referring to the four times Keselowski's won with Team Penske. "That's having fast race cars [and] a guy that's very talented at these style race tracks. I had confidence. "Obviously, I knew there was an opportunity we could come here and get caught up in the big one. ... But ultimately you've got to have confidence and know what your strengths are, and I knew this was our strength right now. You've got to believe you can do it and hope for the best." In other words, Keselowski was lucky and good. "There's some weeks where I kind of feel a little bad about the paycheck I earn for the workload. But Talladega ain't one of them, I'll tell you that right now," Keselowski said. "I kind of take it in stride and [I am] just thankful to have the position I have."
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