HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Brad Keselowski was bummed out about his 20th-place finish Sunday evening in the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but he was ecstatic to finish fifth in the championship after having a definite impact in his first Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff.

"I don't think anyone really expected that out of us, but I never stopped believing that we could be a contender and have a lot of fun and do well as a team," Keselowski said. "I think we've got a lot to build off of. We'll have to work on it, build off it, too. I'm real proud of the effort for the whole team."

Keselowski and his No. 2 Penske Racing Dodge team roared into the Chase based off two victories in the five races leading up to the Chase cutoff at Richmond, but with three other top-10s, including a second and a third.

His "wild-card" entry into the 10-race stretch run -- in only his second full Sprint Cup season -- made Keselowski the surprise of the Chase, right through to his Ford 400 performance.

Only the latest daring strategy call by his core group, led by "rookie of the year crew chief" Paul Wolfe -- if such an award was even offered -- put him in position to challenge for a stunning top-five finish, if he hadn't needed to make a pit stop for two tires and splash of fuel with seven laps left.

But that locked Keselowski into the top five in the standings, in the process knocking five-time defending Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson out of that select group -- the first time in Johnson's 10-year Cup career that he hadn't finished in those first five positions at season's end.

The fact that Johnson's engine issue early in the race -- before a 74--minute red flag due to rain -- was what served to knock him out of the top five was irrelevant to Keselowski, whose grin lit up one small zone in a garage that was alive with crewmen hustling to load equipment and get started on their offseason.

"We were going to finish fifth in the points, so we just took a chance to try to get to third [and] it just didn't pay off," Keselowski said. "If we caught a yellow, we could have been in really good position, but just wasn't meant to be. I think we did all the right things and just didn't catch the breaks we needed and really just didn't quite have a fast enough car.

"We put ourselves in position to have good things happen to us and that's OK."

"We just didn't have the car that we were hoping to have [Sunday] night," Wolfe said. "It really would have been nice to finish with a win [but] we just didn't have the car we needed.

"We worked on it and never could really put it all together. We got to the point where we were just trying strategy stuff to see if we could pull something off with this Miller Lite Dodge Charger. It just didn't work out."

Keselowski's estimation wasn't quite correct, as he wouldn't have leap-frogged third-place Kevin Harvick, who finished eighth, "but we still had a decent day," Keselowski said. "We just need a little more speed in our cars to be able to do something here. You look at the No. 14 [race winner and series champion Tony Stewart] and the No. 99 [runner-up on both counts Carl Edwards] and they just had a lot of speed.

"If we can get a little more speed in our cars, I feel like we can go out there and win a championship."

When you consider that Keselowski achieved what he did after coming into the Chase, where the point standings are reset to reflect three bonus points for each victory during the regular season -- which as a wild card Keselowski could not take advantage of -- his achievement was even more impressive.

Add the race at Martinsville, where Keselowski was just a couple laps from scoring a top-five finish before he ended up 17th, and as some industry insiders have noted, he would've been even more of a player in this Chase.

"We do an excellent job as a team putting ourselves in position where good things can happen to us and I think we're rewarded accordingly," Keselowski said. "The big thing that we have to work on as a team is we've got to be a little faster -- have faster race cars. If we can do that, we'll rely less on strategy."

Wolfe, who won the 2010 Nationwide Series championship with Keselowski before being reassigned at Penske as the Michigan native Keselowski's Cup crew chief, has a good idea what that will take.

"I'm proud of the effort by everyone on this team," Wolfe said. "We were able to earn a top-five spot in the driver point standings and that's a great accomplishment for this team. I'm proud of the effort.

"We feel like we know where we need to go during the offseason to make our cars faster and run strong for the championship. It wasn't from a lack of effort. Everybody put the best effort they could to make this car a championship-caliber car and we did that."

"We'd like to have had a better finish [Sunday] but, you know, like I said, I was only surprised with how we ran," Keselowski said. "We were better than 20th, but we took our chances and just didn't catch the breaks. I'm not frustrated with that. I think that's the right strategy. I would just like to be a little bit faster. That's the only thing I can be frustrated about."

But that will come, probably, as Keselowski accrues more than the 89 career Cup Series starts he currently has. But all that, in good time.

"We've made big steps this year," Wolfe said, after expressing his pride in his crew. "We just have to continue to try and be better and ready once the flag drops at Daytona in a few months."

"I'm ready for the offseason," Keselowski said, smiling again, after assessing that making the Chase and finishing the season in the top five were "pretty damn equal" as the bigger accomplishment.