Long before anything had been found amiss on his spent blue and white Ford, Keselowski sat perched on the pit wall, wiping his face with a cold rag after completing 400 tough miles.
 
“We drove hard all day, we just didn’t have the speed we need to go win the race,” Keselowski said. “But we had the speed we needed to have a solid day.
 
“The guys did a great job of executing today. We haven’t executed and we executed today.”
 
The race marked the return of crew chief Paul Wolfe, team manager Travis Geisler and several other key members of the Penske group after a two-race suspension for violations uncovered at Texas.
 
In Wolfe’s absence, Keselowski finished 32nd at Darlington and 36th at Charlotte.
 
"It means a lot to me to have everybody back,” Keselowski said. “I think the guys that were subbing did an excellent job. But these guys here, Paul and Brian Wilson, my engineer, and Jerry Kelley, my car chief, they’re pretty good too.”
 
Eighth when he started and fifth when he finished, Keselowski was eighth on the final restart of the day, following a Lap 377 caution for an accident involving Denny Hamlin.
 
Quick pit work earned him three spots off pit road and he began the final push in the fifth spot. While there was no catching the leaders, Keselowski battled Kyle Busch and Clint Bowyer at the end to maintain his position.
 
“It is cool to see Tony (Stewart) win, he did a hell of a job driving that thing and it was a good race,” Keselowski said. “I was having fun watching them, but I wish I could have gotten up there.”
 
Wolfe said it was a day-long effort of trying to get the car running fast and consistent, but that “we just didn’t have what it needed to contend for the win.
 
“We just kept fighting hard, and put ourselves in position to get a top five at the end. At the end of the day, if you don’t have the speed, you’ve got to continue to try to execute and get maximum points as you can. I feel like that’s what we were able to do today.”
 
The car didn’t begin to show signs of coming around, Wolfe said, until after the halfway point in the race. An adjustment during a green-flag cycle of pit stops helped, “and it just took off,” he said.
 
“We had fallen out of the top 10 and during the green flag cycle we made and adjustment and we took off really good. That’s when we drove back into the top 10 and were able to hang on from there.
 
“We didn’t have the speed we wanted, but it’s not always about the speed. We got a top-five finish out of it because everyone worked hard. Brad did a great job hanging in there all day when the car wasn’t very good. We were able to get decent finish out of it.”

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Hamlin was runner-up at Darlington his first complete race back and led laps again last week in NASCAR’s longest race, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte. It has been his best two-race combination of the season and the first time he has had back-to-back top-fives since last August when he won consecutive races at Bristol, Tenn., and Atlanta.

Yet as encouraging as these statistics are, Hamlin — a perennial Chase contender — is still reticent to put himself back in elite company just yet.

"I think there’s been a lot of things that have helped us perform the way we have the last couple weeks," Hamlin said. "It’s almost too small of a sample size to draw a conclusion that we are strong. I think we get past here (Dover) and in a few more weeks if we have all top-fives then I’d say that things are looking good for us."

"I knew that I was going to have to do what I needed to do to be better when I got back," Hamlin said, "Obviously, when you have some time off you can either rest and relax or you can go to work and figure out what you can do to be a better race car driver. I think I’m better now than I was beforehand. I think that’s helped our performance."

It has been part philosophical shift and part practical application for Hamlin, who says he began studying film — much like a football player — during his downtime, and thinks that has benefitted his qualifying performances.

"I think that when you’re motivated like we are right now and knowing what we have to do to make the Chase, I think that helps," Hamlin said. "The qualifying, studying … all those things help.

“Whether it’s a hundredth of a second here and there, you add it all up and you got something at the end that you can win with.

"I think you’ve got to identify your weaknesses. I mean you’re not going to just get magically better at a place unless your crew chief magically hits a setup and you’re great. I think that the only way a crew chief is going to do that is if you give him the right information. I don’t know that I’ve given the right information throughout my career.

"The competition is so good now that you have to do everything you can to get an edge on anyone. So, I just try to go that extra mile."

Before Hamlin’s last-lap accident at California — he wrecked with Joey Logano while they were racing for the win — Hamlin was ranked fourth in the standings.

He missed the next four races diagnosed with a compression fracture in the L1 vertebra (lower back) and is now 24th in the championship standings  — 53 points behind 20th-place Tony Stewart — entering Sunday’s race.

He must finish in the top-20 in points and collect at least a win or two to stand a chance at one of the two Chase for the Sprint Cup Wild Card berths.
And now at the halfway mark before the 12-driver Chase field is set, there is palpable urgency to Hamlin’s task.

"I think our only play is to be aggressive," Hamlin said. "I think that to come here and try to get a points day is irrelevant because if we don’t win then we’re really not accomplishing much.

"I feel like we’re hitting our stride," Hamlin said. "We’re running really well at all different types of race tracks.

"Overall, I’m pretty happy. We still need to get those race wins. Not going to panic because we got some great race tracks ahead of us."

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