The Matt Diary:

Roush Racing Driver Diary: Matt Kenseth
Friday, January 27, 2006

Hey guys!

We’ve stayed pretty busy this week with sponsor appearances, media tours, and commercial shoots. January is usually filled with this stuff. Monday was a busy day for sure; we started out with a photo shoot for Ford Racing and their website www.fordracing.com. We did that shoot at Roush Racing’s studio in Concord (N.C.) in the early afternoon then we had some media stop by from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Basically, this specific media tour is sponsored by Lowe’s Motor Speedway. They annually invite a lot of media up to Concord then take them around on charter busses to all of the race shops in the area. Ours happened to be on Monday, so all of Roush Racing’s drivers plus Jack (Roush) were in attendance to speak to the media. They put us on stage and maybe ask us a couple of questions to get the ball rolling, then individually, we go to a designated booth and the media can come up and get some one-on-one time.

As soon as the media tour was over, we flew down to Ft. Lauderdale ( Fla.) for a GE appearance. That lasted for about two hours then we flew to Orlando ( Fla.) to get ready for a Tylenol commercial shoot the following day. We even had a television crew with us the whole day on Monday filming everything we did. That show won’t be ready to air for a while, but we’ll be sure to let you know when it does.

Commercials are kind of cool. It’s something different and usually we get to go to some cool location. The Tylenol commercial that we filmed on Tuesday was shot at the Walt Disney Motor Speedway, which is right between the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center in Orlando, Fla. The weather was 72 (degrees) and sunny, something I’m really not used to in January. They bring in actors and actresses and usually have a production crew of about 50 to 100 people. They give you a script, you rehearse the lines then you shoot. It’s a nice change of pace from our at-track routine, but I believe I’ll stick to my day job.

Wednesday, we had another commercial shoot, this time with Ford. They came to the studio in Concord, which is obviously more convenient for us, and shot me and Greg Biffle together. It’s pretty cool to know what all goes into those commercials; to take part in something like that, then see the finished product; it’s pretty amazing what all they can do and how the commercial looks once everything comes together. It’s a lot of fun to know you helped make something like that.

- Matt