For Matt Kenseth, it's always something

Driver never has NASCAR spotlight to himself
By MIKE FINNEY
The News Journal
03/16/2006

Matt Kenseth can never seem to have a shining moment reserved entirely for himself.

Take his Rookie of the Year season back in 2000, for example. Who finished second? The omni-popular Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Kenseth then won the Cup championship in 2003 with a solid, but unspectacular, season. Of course, NASCAR elected to change its points system by introducing the Chase for the Nextel Cup in 2004.

It just always seems to be something. But Kenseth does not seem to mind.

"It's more of a compliment than anything if they did change [the points system] because of what we did," Kenseth said. "We just didn't make a lot of mistakes that year, and it's hard to do it all season long."

Kenseth is off to a sizzling start this season, having finished 15th at Daytona despite being crashed by Tony Stewart, then winning at California and taking second at Las Vegas last Sunday.

However, Kenseth is still not the talk of the town. That's Jimmie Johnson, who sandwiched victories at Daytona and Las Vegas around a second at California -- all without suspended crew chief Chad Knaus.

That's all right with Kenseth. He is just enjoying this wave of momentum, because he does not know exactly how long it will last.

"I can feel momentum a lot of times, but not necessarily from wins," Kenseth said. "You can have momentum and do like we did at Chicago last year, get beat on two tires [pit strategy] and not win the race and still have a lot of momentum.

"Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. wasn't really having a great year last year and he came and won Chicago, had a great pit call that day and won the race and probably didn't have a lot of momentum before that race and didn't have a lot of momentum after that race, either."

Kenseth knows about momentum. He rallied from a 200-point plus deficit last season to qualify for the Chase for the Nextel Cup in the last event before the Chase began.

He leaped from 16th to ninth in the points over the three races before Richmond, including a victory at Bristol (Tenn.) that snapped a career-long 56-race winless streak.

Kenseth used that momentum and propelled himself to a second-place finish at Richmond to secure his spot in the Chase, where he eventually finished seventh in the points standings.

Robbie Reiser, Kenseth's crew chief, believes the upsurge at the end of last season might have spilled over to this season.

"I think when everybody had us written out of the Chase, that was more of a challenge than anything else, and they wanted to step up to the challenge and turn this thing around," Reiser said. "There are a lot of guys on this team that have been there a long time, and those guys have a lot of pride and were not going to go down without a fight."

Kenseth does not plan on slowing down in the Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta on Sunday.

"I like all the beginning tracks," Kenseth said, of the start of the season. "The Daytona 500, California is an awesome track, Vegas we've had a lot of success at, so I look forward to them.

"The most fun track, probably, as a driver is Atlanta. Atlanta is such a fun place to race at. You can run the white line [at the bottom] or you can have the right rear [of the car] scraping the fence like Carl [Edwards] does and probably run the same lap times around there. So, you never have an excuse for not passing the car in front of you."

No matter what, it has been an eventful start to the season for Kenseth, who was crashed intentionally by Stewart in the Daytona 500 and was passed by Johnson on the last lap for the win at Las Vegas last Sunday.

He does not take those things personally.

"I think when you're on the track and you're not thinking about making your car the fastest or getting the best finish you can get that day and you're worried about somebody else and you're mad at him or he's mad at you, I think you're slowing down your production," said Kenseth.