Matt Kenseth puts Martinsville, Brian Vickers in rearview mirror
Matt Kenseth says he's put last week's incident involving Brian Vickers at Martinsville in the past.
// LaDon George, NASCAR Illustrated
FORT WORTH, Texas – It’s “a new week,” said Matt Kenseth, and last week’s unfortunate turn of events that put his championship hopes in peril are a thing of the past.
The Roush Fenway Racing driver, second in the points standings and trailing teammate Carl Edwards by 14 heading into the Martinsville race, was already trying to salvage whatever possible following an incident with Kyle Busch when he was intentionally crashed by Brian Vickers in the closing laps Sunday.
Kenseth had had earlier contact with Vickers, sparking the retaliation from the Red Bull Racing driver.
The 31st-place finish dropped Kenseth to fifth in points, and he heads into Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 36 points out of the lead.
“I think when you spend time worrying about that and concentrating on problems or making problems for other people, [that] doesn’t really help anybody or turn out good for anybody,” Kenseth said Friday at Texas Motor Speedway.
“I’m kind of over it. I’m looking forward to this week. Every week is a new week. You race people the way you’re raced and, in a way, I think that starts over every week.”
Kenseth, the 2003 NASCAR Cup champion, said he hasn’t spoken with Vickers and that he is not worried about future retaliation from the incidents.
“If he wants to spend his time focused on that, instead of running good, I can’t really do anything about that,” he said.
“... I think he’s got probably bigger problems than just worrying about me or trying to supposedly get back at me for something that he thinks I did to him.”
Vickers, who was involved in five of the day’s 18 cautions at Martinsville, said a day later that he likely would not do the same thing under the same circumstances.
“Not because I don’t plan on wrecking him,” he said, “but just because he was already damaged and it didn’t serve much purpose.”
Kenseth, too, said he would likely have made a different choice, “and even though he ran into me nine times, I would [have] probably just forgot about it and lost that spot.
“We were kind of slipping back and, if there wasn’t a caution, take a 14th- or 15th-place finish and move on to the next week,” he said. “That would have been a smarter decision to make at the time for sure.”
