Top 35 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers: No. 14 - Matt Kenseth
Roush Fenway Racing's Matt Kenseth won two races in the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. // LaDon George, NASCAR Scene
Related stories: Top 35 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers: No. 15 - Clint Bowyer
Top 35 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers: No. 16 - David Reutimann
Top 35 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers: No. 17 - Jeff Burton
Top 35 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers: No. 18 - Marcos Ambrose
Top 35 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers: No. 19 - Kevin Harvick
Roush Fenway Racing's Matt Kenseth opened the season on the highest of high notes, winning first the prestigious Daytona 500 and then again the following week at Auto Club Speedway.
But his engine failed early in his effort to win three in a row, and Kenseth's season was soon sidelined as well. He failed to make the field for NASCAR's Chase For The Sprint Cup for the first time since the championship-determining format debuted in 2004 and wound up with a final points position of 14th. That matched the worst points finish of his full-time Sprint Cup career, which began in 2000 with his current team.
Working with new crew chief Drew Blickensderfer, Kenseth and his group expected this to be a season when they returned to top form, but it obviously didn't turn out that way.
Still, Kenseth's pair of victories followed a winless 2008 season, and his team showed signs of strength late in the year, offering more optimism for the 2010 run. It clearly, though, wasn't the kind of year that the 2003 series champion was comfortable with.
Kenseth did help the organization in its attempt to improve in 2009, though, by racing the new Ford engine at Talladega Superspeedway. The model will be phased in later in 2010.
The Cambridge, Wis., native earned $7,085,707 in purses.
During the offseason, SceneDaily is taking a look at the top 35 in 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup driver points. Here’s how Kenseth’s season unfolded:
By the numbers: Kenseth earned two wins this season. He posted 12 top-10 finishes, seven of them top-fives, en route to his 14th-place finish in the standings. That's the lowest number of top-10s he has earned in a season since 2001 and the lowest number of top-fives since the same year.
Season highlights: Kenseth's season started on a high note as he gave team co-owner Jack Roush his first career NASCAR Cup win in the season-opening Daytona 500. Kenseth followed that with a quick media tour and then headed to Auto Club Speedway in California, where he won again. The back-to-back victories gave Kenseth his best start to a season and the team an early momentum boost.
Key setbacks: Kenseth hit a summer slump, of sorts, that proved devastating to his title hopes. While he didn't finish extremely poorly in any of the races, he managed just three top-10 finishes in a 14-race stretch that dropped him to 14th in the standings - and outside of the Chase field. He was unable to rally back into the top 12.
Newsworthy moment: Kenseth's racing headlines took a backseat to the birth of his daughter, Kaylin Nicola, in July. Kenseth also has a son, Ross. On the racing side, it was announced that DeWalt would end its 10-year racing relationship with Kenseth at the end of 2009, and he will be sponsored, in part, by Crown Royal in 2010.
In his words: “It started really well at Daytona and California obviously, but started to go down the next week at Las Vegas when we finished last. It was a frustrating season because we just did not run well enough. We’ve made some gains the last few weeks, and, hopefully, we will continue to build on that as we move towards next season.”
