INDIANAPOLIS – Though he sits third in points with two races remaining before the start of the NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs, Cole Custer is confident his Stewart-Haas Racing team is on the right track to contend for a championship.

Custer is riding a streak of eight consecutive top-five finishes, including three straight runs of fourth or better, and finished runner-up to Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series regular Brad Keselowski during Saturday’s Sport Clips Haircuts VFW 200 at Darlington Raceway.

In fact, after kicking off the year with back-to-back finishes outside the top 10, Custer has only finished outside the top 10 twice since then, giving his an average finish of 8.5 through the season’s first 24 races.

That kind of consistency is something that Custer believes will help to propel his No. 00 Haas Automation Ford team through the playoffs as they contend for their first series title.

“I feel really good about where we’re at,” Custer said. “I think our mile-and-a-half stuff has always been our strong suit, and this (most recent) run … it’s kind of an unpredictable run through these last five or six races that we’ve had, because you’re going through road courses and you have no idea what’s gonna happen in those, and then you have Bristol and that’s also kind of a wild card.

“I think now we’re gonna get into a stretch where we can really show our speed and get some good finishes.”

One of those good finishes came during last weekend’s race at the tough 1.366-mile, egg-shaped Darlington oval, where Custer took A.J. Foyt’s famed ‘Mooneyes’ paint scheme to a much better run than it had in 1965 at Riverside Int’l Speedway.

Custer noted that struggles on restarts were a big thing that he felt kept him from having a better chance at contending for the victory.

“For some reason I can’t get going on restarts. I just spin the tires, so I don’t know if that’s something we can do transmission-wise, or I just need to work on something,” explained Custer. “I just had that problem all day, so I didn’t get the best restart, and I was kind of able to hold with him at the start of that run.

“We had a really good short run car. I wouldn’t say we had the best long run car, but I tried to save my tires a little bit, so we had something left at the end, and I could maybe catch him a tick at the end if I had a perfect lap, but we were fairly equal, I would say,” Custer continued. “I was really happy with our second-place run, just because of how the race started. We had to tighten the car up a lot to where I could be secure with it and be aggressive, but it was a good day. I can’t thank my team enough for making my car better.”

Leaving Darlington and heading into Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Custer is well in contention for the regular season championship – sitting just 17 points back of leader Justin Allgaier – but still seeks an elusive victory this year.

He believes that could come at Indianapolis this weekend, where he finished fifth last summer.

“With the speed we’ve had at Indy and the high-downforce package, it gives us a lot of confidence in gaining some points for the regular-season championship and racing for a trophy,” noted Custer. “When you look at the stats, you can’t help but have full confidence in your team and yourself heading into the weekend. I think there’s no reason why we can’t compete for a win in Indy and close the points gap.”

Even if he doesn’t win at Indianapolis, Custer does believe that it’s imperative that his group continue to fight for victories going down the stretch run of the season.

“I think you can make it to the final four without winning a race, but that has to be the goal every single weekend. You can’t go there and just try to be consistent,” said Custer. “You have to go to win, but I definitely liked our speed today and I think we can carry that into the playoffs.”