Is Kenseth's strong all-star run a sign of things to come?
By Lee Montgomery - Associate Editor
Sunday, May 18, 2008
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John Harrelson / Getty Images for NASCAR
CONCORD, N.C. – Are things starting to turn around for Matt Kenseth?
One race ago, Kenseth finished 38th at Richmond to fall to 22nd in the NASCAR Sprint Cup points standings. But after a sixth-place finish at Darlington and a third-place in the NASCAR Sprint Cup All-Star Race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway on Saturday, things are looking up for Kenseth.
“I’m just happy to run that good,” the Roush Fenway Racing driver said. “… For us it was almost like a test and it was a good morale booster, I think, for the team and a big confidence booster. We haven’t really been running very good this year and when we have run good, we’ve had a lot of problems.
“We were kind of back, I thought anyway, back in form a little bit [tonight]. We were pretty competitive at times. Sometimes we were a little behind the 99 [of Roush Fenway Racing teammate Carl Edwards], sometimes we were a little behind the 16 [of Greg Biffle] and a couple of other guys, but, overall, I thought we had a pretty good car.
“If it runs solid like that for 600 miles, I think we’ll have a car that can be a contender, and that’s something I haven’t felt like for a while.”
Kenseth is 20th in the standings heading into the Coca-Cola 600, 153 points out a possible Chase For The NASCAR Sprint Cup spot by virtue of that Darlington run. Could he be on a roll similar to 2005 when he stormed from 213 points out of the Chase with six “regular-season” races left to make it in the playoffs?
“The year when we came back, we got on a roll and we were running really good,” Kenseth said. “We won a couple races and we were just running awesome at the time. We had a ton of momentum going, even though we got so far behind at the beginning of the year.
“This year, up to this point, it hasn’t been like that. We’ve been behind and it’s like, ‘OK, you can make up those points,’ but to make up those points you’ve got to be running good. You’ve got to be running better than all the guys in front of you and not have trouble, and we haven’t run better than any of those guys and we have not had trouble, so we’ve got to get running.
“If we can run like we ran tonight and even how we ran at Darlington – we had a top-three or top-four car there probably and finished sixth because we were saving gas. If we can have the cars drive like they did the last two weeks, I think we can get back in it.”
- Mentioned Drivers:
- Matt Kenseth
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