Brad Keselowski still looking for speed after second-place finish

FORT WORTH, Texas — Needing a little more speed Sunday, Brad Keselowski came up one position shy of breaking his 106-race winless streak at Texas Motor Speedway.

Keselowski started 22nd and didn’t run much better than 19th until lap 136. Crew chief Matt McCall kept him on the racetrack, putting him inside the top-10 and in sixth at the end of stage two.

Keselowski collected the points then fell back outside of the top-10 once the strategies cycled out.

As the race worked into its longest green-flag run of the day, Keselowski stayed out, hoping for a caution. High hopes on a day with 16 cautions by the end of it.

“It was a product of the cars and the type of racing, the drivers, their willingness to wreck cars and not give a damn about it. It’s interesting. It is what it is with Cup racing today,” Keselowski said.

So often the caution doesn’t come out but it did Sunday.

With 33 laps to go, Keselowski restarted 10th with fresh tires. With under 20 to go, he made it to third, behind only eventual race winner Chase Elliott.

“[I needed] A lot more speed. We had newer tires there and ran him [Elliott] down with 20 to go. And he just pulled away from me on the straightaway, so there was nothing I could do,” Keselowski said.

Even with five restarts, Keselowski still couldn’t do anything and had to settle for second. Adding another race to a winless streak about to approach three years.

“It just kind of shows we have free spirit when you put yourself in a good position. We’re not running as fast as we want to be. It’s really frustrating not to have that speed but that doesn’t mean we’re giving up. Today was an example of that. We were a 15th-place car, maybe worse than that, and we kept putting ourselves in good position. We raced hard, raced smart and made good calls on pit road and put ourselves in a top-5, top 2 or 3 position,” he said.