Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion, is second in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series point standings and trails leader Jimmie Johnson by 63 points going into Sunday’s Ford 400. Kenseth was part of a championship press conference this afternoon in which he discussed his chances.
MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – OPENING REMARKS: “I feel pretty good about it. I’ve been kind of all gloom and doom here the last four or five weeks with the way we’ve been running, but sometimes the thing kind of works in cycles and I think we’re kind of due for a good run. We’ve had some bad ones, and I think we’re due to come here and run strong. You never wish anything bad on Jimmie, but there are a lot of things that can happen and it’s only 60 or 65 points or something like that, and there are always a lot of cars on the lead lap, so I think it’s gonna be a close race. I think it’s gonna come down to the wire.”
WHAT IS THE MINDSET FOR YOU GOING FOR A POSSIBLE CHAMPIONSHIP? “I think it’s the same as any other weekend. I don’t think you really worry about the other three or four drivers at the moment. If you get in that situation during the race and the 48 has a problem or a flat tire or who knows what happens with all the cars on the lead lap these days, so if there is a problem and we’re close to it, then all of a sudden you’re gonna wonder where the other three guys are at because we are all pretty tight in the points. I think, really, the 48 has kind of had control of the thing pretty good all year and I think we realize that without a problem we’re not gonna beat them on performance. I think they’ve been first or second for five weeks in a row, so that’s pretty stout. I think we’re just gonna go out there and approach it like any other week, try to run the best we can and see what happens in the race.”
IS THERE A MENTALITY OF RUNNING FOR SECOND WITH ALL THE MONEY UP FOR GRABS? “I think not just for the money, but you always want to do the best you can do. You always want to finish as high as you can and have the best year you can – finish as high as you can in the race and in the points – but certainly there’s a pretty big money difference and that trickles down to the whole team and trickles down in bonuses with the guys and the drivers and to car owners and everybody, so we all want to do the best we can. I wouldn’t worry about Jimmie losing that million bucks. He won a lot of races this year. I think he won it back in the Daytona 500 and other stuff, so I don’t think he’s hurting.”
HOW WOULD IT FEEL TO WIN IN THIS FORMAT IN ADDITION TO THE OLD FORMAT? WOULD IT GIVE YOU GREATER SATISFACTION SINCE IT WAS INSTALLED AFTER YOU WON IN 2003? “I’ve never heard that before (laughter). I think for anybody it would be cool to do that. Stewart was able to do it both ways, so I’m certainly thankful for all the years that we’ve had of being competitive and winning the championship that year was a pretty cool thing and, obviously, whatever format we’re under now or what we’ll have in the future, you’d like to be able to do that too. Our goal every year is to try and win races and try to run for a championship, so I think whatever format you do it in would be great.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN DO TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE? “I don’t know what the problems with our cars are. We haven’t run as good lately as what we ran early in the year for sure. Why that is, I don’t know exactly. If I did, we would figure out what it was and try to fix it, but we’ve honestly been a little behind as a company this year. I think everything kind of works in a cycle and last year everybody was running great and we were kind of the last one of Roush Racing to get running good and this year it’s kind of been the opposite – we’ve been running pretty good and everybody else hasn’t had quite as good a car. I think some of that is just catching up with us. I think we’ve got some rebuilding to do next year, but we still have good stuff and it’s the same stuff we’ve been running. We’ve been trying to improve it a little bit, but I think we just probably got behind a little bit on some of our stuff.”
DO YOU JUST NOT HAVE A GOOD POKER FACE TO TRY AND FAKE DOOM AND GLOOM? “I don’t have a good poker face. Sometimes you get feelings about things and I just haven’t really felt that good about it the last four or five weeks. We ran really good at Dover and we ran good at Talladega and pretty decent at Atlanta, but other than that we haven’t really performed very well, so I haven’t felt very good about it. In testing we seemed to run a little bit better. We seemed to find maybe some of the things we’ve been doing wrong, but it’s been a while since we had a real strong run and I think we’re kind of overdue for it. You never know what’s gonna happen. It’s kind of nerve-wracking for all of us. Jimmie has been outperforming almost all of us most of these weeks throughout the chase, but anything can happen with that lucky dog rule and some of the cautions that we get with all those big pieces of debris out there, Robin (laughing). That keeps a lot of cars on the lead lap and when you have a lot of cars on the lead lap and some kind of problem, you know you can lose a lot of positions in a hurry, so it will be exciting down to the end. Even if Jimmie is up running in the top five all day, it’ll still be exciting and I think it’ll still be nerve-wracking for the leader and for the rest of us because you know on any lap anything can happen. I’m excited to be a part of it and it’s 400 miles of action and who knows what’s gonna happen.”
CAN THIS BE FUN OR IS IT JUST BUSINESS? “I think it’s fun, for me anyway, it’s fun being part of the group. I know we all strive to be the best and strive to win and do all that stuff. I think growing up stock car racing, you wanted to be part of the group and race on Sunday and to be part of that group is pretty cool, and then to be part of the chase and being one of the five guys that have a chance to win it – obviously it’s awesome to be a part of that group. Would it be the best feeling to win it? Yeah, but it’s still pretty cool to be part of this group. It’s kind of like the couple years that Dale Jr. kicked my butt in the Busch Series championship. It wasn’t great to finish second and third, but it was a lot of fun racing him all year and being part of that and up in the top two or three all year and racing him for wins, we became good friends doing that and that was fun to be a part of that. So I think anytime you’re a part of something to run for a championship in a level in a sport like this it’s a lot of fun.”
AFTER HAVING FIVE ROUSH CARS IN THE CHASE LAST YEAR AND TWO THIS YEAR, WERE WE TOO OVER THE TOP WITH PRAISE LAST YEAR AND TOO OVER THE TOP IN CRITICISM THIS YEAR? “I don’t know. The stuff hasn’t been as good as what it was last year on a whole by any means, but there have been some changes. There was a driver change and a couple of crew chief changes. Some people moved around, we lost some people, we got some new people, so I think it’s kind of a little bit of a rebuilding process, but I will say that today the competition is tighter than ever, I think, and it doesn’t take very much to get off so you get behind a little bit in a couple of areas and you’re gonna be sort of mid-pack. I don’t think it’s anything where we’re in big trouble, but, certainly, as a group we haven’t been as strong as last year. There are some things to address this winter. They’re moving around crew chiefs and changing stuff again, so hopefully we can get some stuff together and get going again.”
HAS YOUR DEMEANOR CHANGED BECAUSE YOU’RE NEXT TO HARVICK AND JIMMIE? “I don’t know. It’s the last week and, like I said, I think we’ve got to run good sooner or later. I’m sitting between Kevin and Jimmie, which I think Jimmie has five straight top two’s and Kevin won the championship by like 3000 points in the Busch Series and just won last week, so maybe some of it is rubbing off on me and I’m feeling better about life. I don’t know. I just feel good about the week for some reason. I don’t know why. I felt bad about the last bunch of weeks and I was right, so, hopefully, I’ll be right again.”
ONE-ON-ONE SESSION
HOW WAS YOUR TEST AT HOMESTEAD? “It was OK. I don’t think we found anything magic that’s gonna make us run great, but we ran competitively and ran all right.”
CAN YOU SUMMARIZE YOUR THOUGHTS GOING INTO THIS RACE? “I feel good about the weekend. I feel we’re kind of due a bad run. Not that Jimmie is due a bad one or anything like that, but he’s had five great weeks in a row and anything can happen. There are usually a lot of cars on the lead lap. We tested all right here. I think we’ll run OK and you never know what’s gonna happen, so I feel good about it.”
WHAT’S THE BEST-CASE SCENARIO FOR YOU SUNDAY? “No. You guys got it figured out. I don’t know the numbers, but however many spots we’ve got to finish ahead of Jimmie and the rest of the guys that are close to us.”
IF JIMMIE CRASHES, HOW CLOSE DOES IT BECOME WITH YOU AND THE OTHER THREE? “It depends on where the other three are running really. We’re just going out there and doing everything like we normally do. Obviously, if something happens to the 48 it will be a little nerve-wracking. You’ve got to keep track of the other three guys and see where they’re at, but we just have to go out there and run good and hope for the best.”
IS IT EASIER BEING THE HUNTER THAN THE HUNTED? “Honestly, the only one that can be the 48 is the 48, or having bad luck. So they can beat themselves or they could have a flat tire, they could have some bad luck or something like that, but just beating them on performance with the way they’ve been running the last four years, if you want to put it that way, but the way they’ve really been running lately, they’re not gonna go out and run worse than 12th and we’re probably not gonna lead the most laps and win the race, so if they run 15th, 16th, 17th, they’re probably pretty safe and they can do that with their eyes closed. So unless they have mechanical problems or have some bad luck and bad circumstances or something happens around them, they’re really in the driver’s seat.”
HOW HARD IS IT TO KNOW SOMETHING HAS TO HAPPEN LIKE THAT? “It’s been hard for me the last six races because we could have beat them on performance six weeks ago. That was our chance to beat them on performance and we gave those chances up. We’ve had nine chances to beat him on performance and haven’t really been able to do that except for a couple times, so now we’re down to the last week. It’s pretty cool that we still have a shot for it, but to purely do it on performance isn’t gonna happen in one week.”
HOW DOES THE 48 NEED TO APPROACH THIS RACE? “I don’t know how they need to approach it. They know what they’re doing. They’ve kind of been the favorite, I think, for the championship the last four years. They’ve been one of the strongest teams, so if they don’t have a problem, they’re not gonna get beat on performance. So unless they have a problem, they’re not gonna get beat.”
DOES IT COME DOWN TO BASICALLY LUCK? “We certainly can control where we finish from second to sixth or however far you can fall back, but it’s more bad luck on his part. If he has trouble or has something go wrong and they break or something like that, well then you’re right back in it, but certainly if he runs all day and he runs as good as he’s been running all day, he’ll be hard to beat.”
IS THERE A POINT WHERE YOU TAKE CHANCES? “We run as hard as we can run every week. I can’t run any harder than what we’ve been running, so the main thing is to get our car competitive and get our car running good so we have a chance to do something. Our stuff hasn’t been running as good lately as it needs to run, but we do the best we can do every week. It’s not like we run fifth and say, ‘Man, if I would have tried a little harder I could have finished third.’ It’s not really like that. We’re out trying as hard as we can all the time.”
HOW DO YOU PUT FRIENDSHIPS ASIDE? IS THERE ANY FRIENDSHIP OUT THERE AT ALL DURING A RACE? “Yeah, I think there is with most of the field honestly. I don’t think you put that aside. I think you try to race somebody how you’d like to be raced. It doesn’t always work out, but that’s what you try to do. Most of the time they’ll race you back like that, so I think you can certainly be a fierce competitor or even a rival with a friend. You can be friends off the track and get along with each other and show each other respect on the race track and still race each other hard.”
CAN YOU DESCRIBE HOW DIFFERENT IT IS BEING IN THE CHASE VS. HOW YOU WON YOUR TITLE? “The last 10 weeks are almost like the whole season was that year for us. It’s kind of nerve-wracking. You don’t want to lose any points. You don’t want to have trouble and do all that kind of stuff. The rest of the year, the first 26, is maybe a little less stressful if you have a strong team and you’re solidly in the top 10 it’s a little less stressful. You can lose 30 points and have a flat tire and not feel too bad about it because you have enough weeks to make it up and things get evened up with 10 to go.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN WORK ON WITH REGARD TO PERFORMANCE? “We’ve just been working on it. We worked on it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday before the car left to come down here and did a lot of different stuff to try to make it better. We haven’t really had a lot of bad luck in the chase so far. We’ve had pretty even luck. We haven’t had any flat tires or anything silly going on. I don’t think we’ve made really big mistakes on pit road or on the race track. There may be some little stuff here and there, so we’ve been fairly solid, we just haven’t been very fast.”
DO YOU LIKE THE CHASE FORMAT? “I don’t care whether they change it or not. I’ve grown to like it. I think it’s OK. I still think it’s about being consistent the last 10. The guy with the best average finish is still gonna win, which is, I think, the way it should be because there are 43 cars on the track and not five or six. I think it should be about consistency and about winning and I think it’s about both right now.”
YOU HAVE NOT DONE THAT WELL HERE. WHAT MAKES YOU OPTIMISTIC? “Well, the first year I guess we blew up. When we had the championship won they tried some different stuff on the engine, which didn’t work very good. I guess we have had a little bit of trouble here, but we’ve run OK since they reconfigured the track. We didn’t run great last year, but we finished good. I think we finished third or fourth or something like that. It’s a good track. I think this is only the third year since they’ve reconfigured it and in the first year, like I said, we broke and then last year we ran OK.”
HAS ANYBODY COME TO YOU AND ASKED YOU TO EASE UP ON YOUR RACE TEAM? “I don’t think I’ve been extra hard on my race team. They’ve all been around a long time. They’re all big boys. We all get paychecks for how we perform, so I don’t think I’ve been especially hard on them and I don’t think they’ve done a bad job. Our cars haven’t run great, but is that the over-the-wall guys’ fault? No. Is that any one person’s fault? No. I take as much responsibility for that as I give to Robbie or Chip or whoever is setting the cars up. I have a big input in how the cars are built and what gets put in them for shocks and springs and whatever and we’ve just been missing it lately. That’s just the truth. That’s not being hard on anybody. That’s just the truth. Our pit stops haven’t been perfect. They haven’t been as good as what we were early in the year. I don’t feel I’ve made any big mistakes in the chase like in year’s past. In year’s past I put it on the tires at Dover and I’ve done dumb things to take us out of it and I’m the first one to admit that, too. So I think more than being hard on anybody or being pessimistic or anything like that, I think I’ve been realistic and I’ve been calling them like I’ve seen them and have tried to make them better. If things aren’t going great and to tell everybody how great it is, that’s not gonna help them make it better either. I think there’s a time and place for everything. There’s a time when you’ve got to realize that things aren’t going great and you’ve got to buckle down and try to make them better.”
HAVE YOU BEEN MORE FRUSTRATED OR CONFUSED THE LAST FEW WEEKS? “I’ve been both. I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but yet I think everything kind of works in a cycle like I was saying before. Last year all the teams were really strong and we were the last one to get going. I think this winter Robbie did a great job making our bodies better and Chip went kind of a different direction and got some of our chassis stuff better and we combined that and were the first ones at Roush kind of running the new generation of stuff for us and we took off this year really, really fast and were the best team over there. We were as good as anybody in the garage and as the year went on the rest of our teammates incorporated that and I think we kind of got passed by some other people and they’ve just made their stuff better and we just haven’t been able to keep up. We’ve made a change in engineering and some other things and we haven’t kept up with the new stuff. We just got behind, I think, because we lost some people in some key areas and we haven’t necessarily replaced them and got the thing going forward.”
WHEN ONE OR TWO TEAMS DOESN’T PERFORM WELL DOES IT DRAG THE OTHERS DOWN AS WELL? “Eventually it does, not attitude-wise but performance-wise. The thing is kind of consolidated, so the same people build all of our chassis. The same people basically put all of our bodies on. All of our hardware is the same, so if Greg’s not running with the stuff, it’s only a matter of time before my stuff is not running, or vice versa. Especially Greg and I, we drove the same car at Homestead a little bit at the test and we both had the same feedback about it, so I think a lot of our stuff we’ve been able to run the same. Last year I used a lot of his stuff to get running better and kind of got it turned around at the end of the year with a lot of stuff that Greg was doing, so, obviously, he’s not running and Carl’s not running, so you’ve got some of that stuff going on. Obviously we’re a little behind somewhere.”
ARE YOU BEING UNDERESTIMATED THIS WEEKEND? “Maybe. I don’t know how many points we’re ahead of Kevin, but I think if we finish within five or six spots of him we can still beat him, and I think that’s certainly doable unless he goes and dominates the race – we might not be able to run sixth. I think that’s doable, but yet those guys with the way we’ve run the last five or six weeks, they could obviously beat us by more than six spots. Certainly, if something happens to the 48 all four of us are right back in it.”
IT’S ONLY HAPPENED TWICE IN THE LAST 30 YEARS WHEN THE LEADER WAS OVERTAKEN IN THE LAST RACE. ARE YOU SURPRISED BY THAT AND DOES ALAN KULWICKI’S COMEBACK INSPIRE YOU? “Both. Anything can happen. Honestly, it usually doesn’t. Most likely he’s not gonna have a problem. Most likely the stuff is gonna be prepared great. Most likely they’re not gonna have mechanical problem. Most likely they’re not gonna get in an accident. Jimmie is smart, but there are a lot of things that can happen. Look at Kurt when that wheel fell off and it all just happened just right and he got on pit road and still won the championship. If that would have happened off of turn two, he probably wouldn’t have won the championship. So anything can happen and you’ve got to be ready for that. You’ve got to prepare like that. You’ve got to have all your stuff ready in case something does, so you can still be in a position to capitalize on it because with the way we’ve fallen behind, even if he does have trouble we’ve got to be careful or the 29 and the 11 and those guys are gonna pass us. So I think Jimmie is in the driver’s seat. I think it’ll be difficult for something to happen to them to take them out of the championship. They’ve got a big enough of a lead where even with a little bit of adversity they still should be able to overcome it.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN DO TO MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN? “We’ve had nine weeks to make something happen and the bottom line is the couple of times have, we haven’t really gotten the finishes we need and we’ve had other things happen. You can only run the best you can. You can’t do better than your best. If you try to make your car go faster than you know it’s capable of going, that’s when you’re gonna wreck or get yourself in trouble. You can only run as hard as you can run and do the best job you can do. We’ve really been doing that every week, we just haven’t had the cars capable of running up front, but we’ve been doing the best job we can and putting in 100 percent effort every week and we’ll just do that again.”
IS ANYTHING DIFFERENT THIS WEEK? “No, nothing is different. If we were in Jimmie’s spot it probably would be just a little different because you know you only have to run 12th to 17th to win the thing no matter what everybody else does. You’d maybe have a little different approach, maybe be a little more careful with your gear ratio or your aggressiveness on your engine. You might be careful so you don’t break any parts, but other than that I think you do everything the same.”
WILL IT BE MORE NERVE-WRACKING THIS WEEK THAN LAST? “No, if we’re out there running the race and we’re running ninth and something happens to the 48 and the 29 is a few spots in front of us and everybody is right around us, then it will probably get nerve-wracking, but until that time I don’t think it’s that nerve-wracking. I think we try to keep those other three guys behind us and run the best we can. They’re in the driver’s seat. If something happens to them, obviously it’s gonna change and it’ll be a little nerve-wracking and you’ll see where everybody else is running, but if that doesn’t happen, I don’t think it’ll be much different than normal.”
IS JIMMIE WINNING A TITLE INEVITABLE? “Oh yeah, for sure. I think if you asked anybody in the garage and they told you the truth, they’d say the 48 deserves to be a champion. They’ve been a championship-caliber team since the inception of it. Since Jimmie and Chad Knaus got together they’ve been championship caliber. They’ve really been the overall team the last four years I think. If you asked about one team you had to beat to win the championship, you’d have to think about them.”
DOES WINNING A TITLE HELP YOU GOING INTO THIS RACE? “Not anymore. I think it would help if we were leading, but where we’re at I don’t think it really helps. The only car we control is our own and, obviously, if we beat Jimmie by a spot or two that’s not good enough for the championship, so I don’t think that really helps right now. If we were in the lead, it might help a little bit.”
IS THERE LESS PRESSURE ON YOU NOW? HE’S NEVER WON IT. “Yeah, I think they’ve got the most pressure on them because they know they’re in the driver’s seat. Unless they have a problem, they’re going to be the champions, so I think for sure the most pressure is on them and they’re the ones probably the most nervous in making sure that everything as they’re preparing it that they go through everything real good.”
HOW HARD WOULD YOU RACE JIMMIE ON THE LAST LAP? “If it gets down to the last couple of laps and you’re racing Jimmie, he’s not gonna race you very hard. He’s not gonna give anybody an opportunity to race him very hard. Jimmie is smart. He’s not gonna put himself in a spot to get wrecked. Just like Tony last year. Tony knew where he had to finish and that’s about where he finished. I don’t think he was up front or a factor to win it, he just got in a spot and made sure he stayed out of trouble.”
WHAT’S THE BIGGEST WORRY YOU HAVE ON YOUR MIND? “I don’t really have one right now because we’re not in that spot. If you were in that spot, I’d worry about everything. I’d worry about tires being loose or engines blowing or running over a piece of debris. I’d be worried about everything, but not being in that spot, I’m not really worried about anything right now – just getting our stuff to run.”
IF IT CAME DOWN TO YOU AND JIMMIE AND YOU HAD TO MOVE HIM OUT OF THE WAY, WOULD YOU? “No, I wouldn’t do that. I’d race somebody else how I think they’d race me. That’s how I do it. I’d figure out who it is and what I think they would do in the opposite situation and that’s how I’d race them. I’ve been in a lot of races with Jimmie and he’s had a lot of chances to knock me out of the way, even at a track like Bristol where it’s acceptable, and he’s never done it, so I wouldn’t do that to him either. If it was the 24, maybe that would be different but I don’t think the 48 would do that to me and I wouldn’t do that to him either.”
EVEN WITH THE TITLE ON THE LINE? “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think you should race anybody different, whether it’s for the title or not. I think you should race people the way you want to be raced. Most of the time it works out. Most of the time they race you back like that and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you’ll make a mistake and you’ll have a problem with somebody, but I really think you should race people how you want to be raced. You should race people as hard as you can race them but still do it cleanly.”
WHAT WILL YOU BE HAPPY WITH ON SUNDAY? “I’d be happy Sunday if we ran competitively. I’d really be happy if we could run in the top five, lead some laps and finish in the top five. I’d be pretty happy with that for a day because we haven’t been able to do that the last five or six weeks. If we could put together a solid run, have a solid day on pit road, run up in the top five and finish up there, I think that would be a good day for us.”
WHAT IS YOUR STRATEGY? “I’m just focusing on trying to get our stuff to run better, trying to figure out what we’ve been doing wrong, trying to get a little more competitive so we have some ideas going into the winter t
