Brad Keselowski's season was not supposed to start like this.

The 2008 campaign saw the Nationwide star finish third in points in his first full season with JR Motorsports. The No. 88 team had so much confidence heading into Daytona this year that talks of championships rang through their garage.

“

We've been through a stretch, some good, some bad. We haven't necessarily gotten the finishes we deserve, but we've run extremely competitive each week, and that's encouraging. I feel like we've had the tools all along.

”

-- BRAD KESELOWSKI

A 22nd-place finish at Daytona was a tough pill to swallow but back-to-back 27ths at Fontana and Las Vegas put Keselowski 22nd in points, 244 markers behind point leader Carl Edwards.

"I hate it for my guys, my sponsors and the fans," Keselowski said after Las Vegas. "I continue to learn each week and I'm just hopeful that I will be able to put together a run that shows how good these cars and my team really are."

That run looks to be happening now.

A 12th-place finish at Bristol followed by a third at Texas and a third Saturday at Nashville has Keselowski up to fifth in points, 226 back.

"We've been through a stretch, some good, some bad," Keselowski said. "We haven't necessarily gotten the finishes we deserve, but we've run extremely competitive each week, and that's encouraging. I feel like we've had the tools all along.

"We've made some gains here in the last few weeks which are encouraging to me."

That's not to say the climb into the top five has been easy.

At Texas, Keselowski crashed on his qualifying run and had to go to a backup car. Starting 42nd, it took crafty pit calls, great driving and some lucky breaks to get the No. 88 up front.

"My guys did an awesome job getting that back-up car ready and I think they gained me something like four spots on pit road throughout the race," Keselowski said. "We were finally able to put everything together and get that solid run we'd been looking for."

Keselowski started 19th at Nashville and immediately worked his way into the top 10, staying there for a majority of the race with strong runs and even better pit stops. While he didn't have anything for the Joe Gibbs Racing duo of first- and second-place finishers Joey Logano and Kyle Busch, Keselowski was satisfied with the performance.

"[Logano] and [Busch] were pretty much the class of the field," Keselowski said. "I just couldn't get to them on those last couple restarts. I'm really pleased with this third-place run though for sure. I'm even more proud of my guys and the work they did on pit road. Getting me those five spots early in the race was key to our success and I can't thank them enough for their hard work week in and week out."

After a rough start, it can be tough to stay positive -- especially for young drivers. But Keselowski has kept his composure, shown his maturity and it's starting to pay off in the results column.

"You know, we've had a couple of bad races there, and if you just eliminated one of those bad races, we'd be third in points," Keselowski said." But, it's a long season and we've got 29 races left or something like that, which is a lot of races and every week is important."