Brad Keselowski wins the 2014 GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway

In a week filled with drama and in desperate need of a victory, Brad Keselowski came through in a big way Sunday winning the Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway.

Just a week after getting into a scuffle at Charlotte with Matt Kenseth, Keselowski won his sixth race of the season and put himself into Round 3 of the Chase for the Sprint Cup. Without a win Sunday, he would have been eliminated. The third round will begin next week at Martinsville Speedway.

Keselowski passed Ryan Newman for the lead with two laps remaining in regulation, but a caution for a crash involving Dale Earnhardt Jr. set up a green-white-checkered finish. Keselowski again got the jump on the subsequent restart only to be re-passed by Newman in Turn 2. A wild scramble ensued and with a push from Kenseth, who attacked Keselowski a week ago in the garage, Keselowski retook the lead on the final lap and drove away for the win.

“I can’t believe it,” Keselowski said. “Talladega is such a wild card and to be able to win here you have to catch breaks and make your own breaks, a little of both. I can’t believe we won at Talladega. This race is the scariest of the three in the bracket. To be able to win here is really a privilege, it really is.”

Because they finished ninth and lower in points and failed to win a Round 2 race, Kyle Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne all failed to move on in the Chase.

Like Keselowski, Johnson and Earnhardt entered Talladega in essentially a must-win situation, and both nearly pulled it off. Johnson and Earnhardt ran 1-2 for much of the first half, with Johnson leading a race-high 84 laps. But Johnson slid back in the closing laps, while Earnhardt got caught up in a wreck with two laps remaining.

“It feels relieving to go down swinging,” Johnson said. “The last two weeks were really poor. At least we went down swinging. I’ll take some pride in that.”

Said Earnhardt: “We worked real hard all day long trying to run up front. I knew we needed to be up front all day long. We got shuffled to the back. I made a move trying to get up front and it didn’t work out. So, we lost a lot of track position and never got it back.”

Busch’s hopes of advancing went askew when he was caught up in a Lap 104 multi-car wreck. In a chain-reaction incident, Austin Dillon rear-ended Busch, sending him spinning into the backstretch wall.

The No. 18 sustained significant damage, spending nearly an hour in the garage undergoing repairs. Busch eventually returned to the track and finished 40th. If Keselowski wouldn’t have won Sunday, Kahne would have advanced.

The Eliminator Round, the third three-race segment in the Chase, begins Oct. 26 at Martinsville Speedway. Eight drivers -- Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick, Newman, Denny Hamlin, Kenseth, Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon and Keselowski -- will compete for four spots in the championship finale Nov. 16 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.