Matt Kenseth on the Coca-Cola 600:

“It’s just difficult and I enjoy long races. I like how you start during the day and the track is real snotty and mean and nasty and slippery, and as you go on at night your car takes such a dramatic change and you just have to stay on top of it. I mean, you make a million pit stops and you get to adjust on your car all night long and it’s just a really fun event for me to try to figure out what the track is going to be like in the beginning and what you have to give up in the beginning of the race to be good at the end of the race. It’s fun to figure that out and try to wrestle the car and get frustrated with it, but then be happy with it at the end because the track changed for you. Just to try to figure that out and go through a unique race like that where the conditions change so much to me is a lot of fun.”

Robbie Reiser on the Coca-Cola 600:

“We’re bringing the same car. I told the guys to turn it around and get this thing ready for the 600 — all I’m changing is the paint scheme.”

Notable Notes

Matt Kenseth won the NASCAR NEXTEL All-Star Challenge last Saturday night with a thrilling pass for the lead on lap 87 of 90. Kenseth won $1,044,000 for the victory.

Kenseth remains fourth in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup standings. He is 126 points out of first place. Kenseth has spent 47 straight weeks inside the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series Top 10 — the longest active streak.

This week marks the debut of the No. 17 Smirnoff Ice Ford and their primary sponsorship, which will run in five other events in 2004: July 3rd at Daytona, July 25th at NHIS, August 8th at the Brickyard, September 5th at Richmond and October 3rd at Talladega.

The No. 17 Smirnoff Ice team will be bringing chassis #19 to Lowe’s Motor Speedway. It is the same car the team ran last week to a victory in the All-Star race. The only difference will be a coat of paint.

Matt Kenseth won his first ever Cup race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway as a rookie in the Coca-Cola 600. It happened in 2000.

In 13 starts at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Kenseth has two wins, five top-fives and eight top-10 finishes.

CONCORD, NC (May 22, 2004) — Matt Kenseth, driving the No. 17 DEWALT Tools Ford, won the NASCAR NEXTEL All-Star Challenge under the lights at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, taking home over $1 million in the process. And he earned it the hard way — with a squeaky-clean pass over then-leader Ryan Newman with just three laps remaining in the 90-lap shootout.

The All-Star event, formerly known as the Winston, was split into three segments of 40-laps, an inversion of the top eight cars, then 30 laps and another break, then a final 20-lap dash for all the marbles. Kenseth was up front in all three segments with a car that clearly had the right setup to the 1.5-mile quad oval located in the heart of North Carolina’s NASCAR Country.

After a Friday night qualifying session that included a three-lap timed run with a four-tire pit stop, Kenseth put his car solidly in the third starting position as the cars rolled off the grid. The race was only four laps old when the first caution flag of the night flew for Ricky Craven’s mishap in turn two. Kenseth reported to Robbie Reiser that the car was too tight from the center off and to free it up when he came in for service. The teams were notified in the pre-race meeting that they would have to make a pit stop between laps 10 and 35 of the first 40-lap segment.

On lap nine, the green flag waved and the cars were turned loose again. They only made it one lap before the most major incident of the night occurred and, unfortunately, it involved two of Kenseth’s Roush Racing teammates. As the field came down through the quad-oval on the front stretch, Kurt Busch attempted to assist Greg Biffle with a bump draft heading into turn one. The problem is, it worked too well. Both Biffle and Busch lost control of their cars and careened into each other, touching off a 10-car incident that flowed into turns one and two. NASCAR threw a 20-minute red flag to clean up the debris.

NASCAR finally got the first segment rolling again as Kenseth restarted in fourth place on lap 15. On lap 21, Robbie Reiser called Kenseth to pit road for his mandatory stop. The team got him back out on the track with a 13.20-second stop — which eventually gave Kenseth second place in the event after all of the competitors finished their pit stop cycles by lap 29. “The car is neutral right now, but I have a ton of power,” related Kenseth from the cockpit. Kenseth’s No. 17 DEWALT Tools Ford did carry one of the Roush/Yates power plants with the newly designed cylinder head. By lap 32, Kenseth was running second to Tony Stewart, but was reeling him in with faster lap times. He just didn’t have enough laps to complete a pass. After 40 laps, NASCAR waved the caution flag and the teams pitted in position.

The inversion for the second segment was determined to be eight positions, meaning Kenseth would restart the second 30-lap segment from inside the fourth row in seventh place.

The second segment was much tamer than the first, with Kenseth hovering from seventh to eighth in the opening laps. On lap 54, a caution flag flew for a spin by Jimmie Johnson. The DEWALT Team used the break to bring Kenseth in for new tires and service. “Let’s take our chances,” said Kenseth. “We’re not getting anything done with the tires right now,” he added. On lap 61, the teams restarted and Kenseth took off like a rocket. He moved from seventh to fifth in the first lap, and then picked up fourth two laps later. Earnhardt Jr. was in front of Kenseth, but the No. 17 DEWALT Tools Ford took the position on the final lap of the second segment to nail down the third spot.

Under the caution flag that separated the segments, teams could pit, but they might lose the track position they had previously earned. It didn’t matter as the entire field came down pit lane save for then-leader Ryan Newman — who was set to take his chances on old tires. The over-the-wall crew blazed a 12.80-second stop and Kenseth returned to the track in third, but as the first car to change four tires. Elliott Sadler took two tires and came out second. As it stood, the car restarting in first had no tires, and the second place car had two. Kenseth had four tires and was clearly sitting in the catbird seat with just 20 laps separating the team from a $1 million payday.

The final 20 laps were quite a display for racing purists. No bumping and grinding, just smooth, calculating moves up front dominated the first three cars of Newman, Kenseth and now Earnhardt Jr. — looking for his second such All-Star victory. They staged an epic battle with Kenseth digging down low on Newman and Earnhardt Jr. running all the way up against the wall, looking for a way around the leaders.

Each breathtaking moment on the track led to wild cheering from the 17 pit box. On lap 74, Kenseth slipped underneath Newman coming to the line. However, a hard charging Ryan Newman refused to lift and beat Kenseth’s challenge back going hard down the backstretch. The laps were winding down and by now, Earnhardt Jr. had faded back, making it a two-car race. On lap 82, with just eight laps remaining, again Kenseth dug underneath Newman without touching him. It almost held. Newman fought him off again. It would be four more agonizing laps of some of the best clean racing in recent memory until Kenseth got another shot. This time, on lap 86, it stuck. Kenseth pulled away to a five car-length lead as he crossed under the checkered flag in front of over 140,000 fans.

Kenseth keyed the mike and let out a bloodcurdling emotional scream while reminding the celebrating crew that they had just won a million bucks. After following the pace car around Lowe’s Motor Speedway to the cheering crowd, Kenseth was directed to the front stretch underneath the flag stand for the celebratory presentation.

A beaming Kenseth climbed from the car and talked about one of the most special races of his life, likening it to his first ever Cup Series win at the same track in 2000 as a rookie.

“That was great. This is a great event that Nextel puts on. My DEWALT crew, these guys up on stage won the race. They prepared a really good car, had great pit stops tonight and did everything right. Ryan did a great job holding me off on old tires. He made me work. I think even if you ask him, it’s probably the hardest either one of us has had to race in a long, long time. I did everything I could do to get by him. I just saw when he slipped off four and I got up close to him and then he slipped farther so I was able to clear him. If I couldn’t clear him, I couldn’t pass him. He’d get the air off me and I’d be too loose. It was a heck of a battle and a lot of fun.”

“My car was a little tight most of the night and on that set of tires I got real loose on, which was a good thing when I was behind him. I tried to actually follow him for 15 laps and build some tire pressure in the right front to get my car tighter, but it just wouldn’t get tighter. When I got alongside of him all he had to do was stay close to me and I’d get so loose that I couldn’t finish the pass. Finally he slipped enough to where I was able to make the pass.

“It was weird because all night my car was pretty aerodynamically tight. I couldn’t get turned behind people and we didn’t do anything to free the car up and that set of tires was looser or the track got looser than anything we had all night, which was a good thing when you’re behind somebody. The same places Ryan would get loose, I would get loose. I just couldn’t get a run on him and when I could get a run on him and get alongside of him, Ryan is very, very smart and knows how to get you in a compromising position where you can’t finish a pass, which is what you should do. He would just get real close to me and get air off of me and I couldn’t finish the pass without sliding into him and I didn’t want to slide into him and slide him up three grooves and do all that. I wanted to pass him clean and thought we had the better car with tires on, so I just kept waiting and waiting and trying to get behind him to make my car tighter to build air-pressure in the right-front and I got a real good run on him off four and he was only about halfway to the white line and then he started sliding. I had my car right in a spot where a lot of times it will pack air in the left-rear wheel well and get him pushing. He started losing the groove and then he turned sideways and I was a couple inches away from him and just stayed right there and he got sideways enough where I knew I was going to clear him, so I just stayed in the gas and cleared him right there. That’s what I needed to do. I needed to be in front of his car by the time we got to the next corner, so he wouldn’t pull my car sideways and I could get away. We had much better tires on our car and it just took 15 laps to be able to set him up and get that pass I needed.

“This is a really special win for me for a couple of reasons. I was real excited to win the first two races this year. We’ve run well, but we haven’t run like we ran the first two races. We haven’t been the guy to beat and leading all the laps and dominating races like we kind of did at Rockingham and Vegas, so it feels good to come out and do that. It feels good to still kind of vindicate ourselves after some of the criticism we got last year, although it really doesn’t bother me too much. But, still, to come out at a race where you run wide open the whole race, it’s not real long runs where we just creep up there and find our way to a top five at the end of the race. You had to run hard all race long. It’s a short race. It’s no-holds-barred. Everybody brings their best stuff and my team just did a great job of preparing the best stuff. They had the best pit stops on pit road last night in qualifying and tonight in the race and they got the car to stay up front. I’m just really proud of those guys and really excited for the win.”

Because the All-Star race is a non-points event, Matt Kenseth and the No. 17 DEWALT Tools team remain fourth in the NASCAR NEXTEL Chase for the Championship, trailing leader Dale Earnhardt Jr. by 126 points. The series remains at Lowe’s Motor Speedway next weekend for the Coca-Cola 600, the longest race of the year. Needless to say, the team will be bringing the same racecar to next week’s race, but it won’t look the same. Next weekend kicks off Smirnoff Ice’s first of six primary sponsorship events in the 2004 season.

CONCORD, NC (May 19, 2004) — Matt Kenseth has filmed so many commercials recently, that he could qualify for a guest spot on a network television sitcom. It’s not that he minds doing them at all-they just happened to gang up on him this month. He began with the NEXTEL commercial, which was filmed prior to the California race. After that, it was two Gillette commercials back-to-back last week. And just this week, it was Goodyear’s turn.

Kenseth spent most of Wednesday morning at a residential home located in the University Place neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina. Goodyear executives on hand had Kenseth posing in his DEWALT uniform with a family mini-van in the driveway. The commercial calls for Kenseth to apply the familiar Goodyear logo on the front fender just above the tire. As two curious children watch from over his shoulder, Kenseth turns to them and remarks, “…looks nice, huh? It should make it go faster!”

It’s all part of a big NASCAR push for Goodyear executives to get the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup drivers further utilized in their advertising for 2004. Also scheduled to take part in the short Goodyear spots are Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr. According to the scripts seen on location, Tony Stewart will be cutting some grass with a Home Depot inspired lawnmower with Goodyear tires.

Each of the commercials that feature Kenseth will continue to promote his image as the defending NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Champion. It seems everyone wants to use him in their campaigns and that can be a great thing-adding value to both Kenseth himself and his primary sponsor, DEWALT Tools.

Matt Kenseth performance summary at Lowe’s

DATE	START	FINISH	LAPS	MONEY	STATUS
10/11/99	27	40	231/334	$19,680	Accident
05/28/00	21	1	400/400	$200,950	Running
10/08/00	26	9	400/400	$50,100	Running
05/19/01*	13	14	70/70	$28,900	Running
05/24/01	40	18	399/400	$65,630	Running
10/07/01	32	12	334/334	$52,440	Running
05/18/02*	1	3	90/90	$122,500	Running
05/26/02	21	2	400/400	$170,600	Running
10/13/02	7	34	254/334	$62,680	Engine
5/18/03*	17	6	90/90	$77,104	Running
5/25/03	18	2	276/276	$206,500	Running
10/11/03	29	8	334/334	$82,425	Running

* All-Star - non-points events

Matt Kenseth on Lowe’s Motor Speedway:

Robbie Reiser on Lowe’s Motor Speedway:

Notes