Matt Kenseth dominates at Bristol — Scores first Cup win of 2005 season
August 27, 2005

n Cup race photos by ASP

BRISTOL, TN (August 27, 2005) — It was a long time coming, but Matt Kenseth captured his first win of the 2005 NASCAR Nextel Cup season Saturday night under the lights at the Bristol Motor Speedway. Kenseth executed a dominating performance by capturing the pole position on Friday and leading 415 of the 500 total laps of the Sharpie 500.

Kenseth started the weekend off in good form by posting the fastest lap in qualifying on Friday, getting around the half-mile oval in just 15.073 seconds for his first pole position of the season. Leading the field of 43 to take the green flag, Kenseth dominated by remaining on the point for most of the event. By lap 18, Kenseth began to lap several cars at the end of the field. Telling his crew that the car was a “little loose on exit,” Kenseth came down pit road during the first caution period on lap 68 and received air pressure and track bar adjustments, along with four fresh tires and fuel. The DEWALT team lost one position on pit road and restarted in the second position on lap 74.

Kenseth wouldn’t stay second for long, though, and resumed the lead on lap 98. Kenseth brought the DEWALT Ford down pit road once again during the fourth caution period and the crew made a wedge adjustment and gave Kenseth four tires and fuel. The No. 17 held its position off of pit road and continued to lead as the race restarted on lap 134. The crew continued to make minor adjustments throughout the night and Kenseth never fell below 6th place.

The DEWALT crew was on the top of their game, with the pit stops improving as the night progressed. The final stop of the evening occurred during the 14th caution period of the event. Kenseth brought the No. 17 down pit road and received a track bar adjustment and four tires. The DEWALT crew executed the stop in a blistering 12.5 seconds. When the next caution was brought out on lap 467, the No. 17 stayed out. Kenseth, communicating to his crew over the radio, gave the team some encouraging news, saying, “I’ve been saving it a little bit.” With such a dominating performance up to that point, it was hard to believe the No. 17 still had more steam under the hood.

A final caution flag slowed the field on lap 494 which allowed the cars behind Kenseth to catch up to him. There was no challenge in the final laps, however, as Kenseth and the DEWALT team clearly had the dominant car of the evening, and Kenseth took the checkered flag for his first win of the 2005 season.

“This whole weekend has just been amazing,” said Kenseth, after the race. “I just can’t say enough about this car and my team tonight. Roush gives us such good equipment and my guys worked on the car all night to make it even better. This win has been a long time coming for us and it feels awesome to be in Victory Lane again. With a dry spell like the one we’ve had, it just makes it all the more sweeter to be here now. And to win from the pole is just the icing on the cake. I’m so happy for my team, who have kept at it and worked so hard all year, and I’m grateful to them for all that they’ve done. I have to thank Jack Roush and DEWALT for their continuous support, too. This is just awesome!”

With his win in Bristol, Matt Kenseth catapulted four spots in the Nextel Cup standings, moving up to the 11th position, and only 11 points behind 10th-place.

The No. 17 DEWALT Ford Taurus will be back in competition next Sunday at the California Speedway on Sunday, September 4.

Ford Bristol Post-Race Quotes
August 27, 2005

Sharpie 500 • August 27, 2005 Bristol Motor Speedway

KENSETH WINS FIRST RACE OF 2005

n Matt Kenseth posted the 10th of his NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series career with today’s triumph and first at Bristol Motor Speedway.

n Kenseth’s last points win came a year ago at Las Vegas (56 races ago). He also won the Nextel All-Star Challenge non-points event at Charlotte in ‘04.

n Kenseth is the fourth different Roush Racing driver to win a Cup race this season, joining Kurt Busch, Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards.

n Today’s win is the 10th of the season for Ford, which equals last season’s total.

n Ford has 564 all-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series wins.

MATT KENSETH — No. 17 DeWalt Taurus — VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW:
“It means a lot. This base group has been together for a long time and they do an awesome job every week. Our performance has been better and you knew we had a fast car when we’re on the pole and for me to qualify as fast. Our DeWalt Ford was awesome all day. I’m just so thankful to have the opportunity to drive these race cars. It’s a lot of fun.”

YOU NEVER SEEMED CONCERNED. “No, we were pretty fast. We were a little free, which made us real fast on a short run. I was a little scared if we had like a 150-lap run that we were gonna be too loose, but it was a 70-lap run and they couldn’t run with us. We were pretty stout, so it feels great. I’ve got thank all of my sponsors. I’m gonna forget most of them because it’s been so long, but mainly DeWalt, they’ve been with us forever, and Ford. Carhartt, Waste Management, Trex, USG, Kraft singles and Gillette Young Guns.”

JUST 11 POINTS OUT OF 10TH PLACE. “I thought we were out of it and we had a great run last week. I felt like performance-wise we won the race last week, we just came up short on fuel, but I had a great car. That really put us back in it and tonight leading all the laps and winning, of course, I knew that was gonna get us closer, but there are still a couple of races to go. We’ll see what we can do. We’re a lot closer. I see some of those guys had trouble and if we can run like we did at Michigan at California next week I think we’ll be right there.”

MATT KENSETH PRESS CONFERENCE

JACK ROUSH, Car Owner — “Robbie brought a great car here. Normally with Matt, when he finishes a practice session and says he really doesn’t know what he needs to do, he asks them if they want to use the remaining time for something that Robbie or Chip wants to try — the engineer — they get it going pretty good. But, anyway, to start from the pole. This is only Matt’s second pole since we’ve been Cup racing together was pretty amazing. I had a feeling that if he could stay up front, if he didn’t get snookered by staying out when he shouldn’t or coming in when he shouldn’t — that if he could maintain track position he was gonna be really good tonight and that was all Robbie Reiser determining when they came in. The holding and folding and the gambling part or the raising gambling part, that was Robbie. Robbie and I don’t see eye to eye every once in a while on pit road, but tonight he was at his best and I stayed out of it so it worked out OK.”

ROBBIE REISER, Crew Chief — WERE YOU CONFIDENT TONIGHT? “I’m never confident. I mean, this has just been a struggle. A lot of times we start races I think we’ve got a good car and we don’t, so most of the time the first 20 laps I sit back and watch what’s going on and, hopefully, we’ve got a decent car and tonight we seemed to have one.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED — IS THE 17 TEAM PEAKING AT THE RIGHT TIME? “As far as peaking at the right time, that’s exactly what I’ve been telling the guys that fortunately we hadn’t peaked and we had our peak in front of us. If it was high enough and it came soon enough we might have a chance. I’d all but written off our chances to get in three races ago, but Robbie and the guys didn’t lose the faith and they’ve kept it going. I was building toward next year all the way, but they’ve got it turned around now. It’s gonna be a horse race when they go to Richmond.”

ROBBIE REISER CONTINUED — HAS THIS TEAM BEEN BETTER ALL ALONG? “I think in the first part of the year Jack was ready to fire me. It was probably the best team I’ve ever had and that’s a lot to say considering we won a championship in 2003, but this group of people that we’ve got right now they don’t get down, they keep working. Obviously, this was a good testament of it tonight. This team hasn’t run that well this year, but the last couple of weeks it’s been really coming around and these guys have stuck into it and I don’t have one guy that has spent the season complaining. They’ve pretty much just gone to work. The month of May was really tough on this team. We got way behind with some of the car setup and some of the things we had going on, but we were able to turn it around. The last two months have been real strong for this team and these guys are behind it 100 percent. I think when everybody had us written out of the chase that was more of a challenge than anything else and they wanted to step up to the challenge and turn this thing around. There are a lot of guys on the 17 that have been there a long time and those guys have a lot of pride and they aren’t gonna go down without a fight.”

MATT SAID HE HAD WRITTEN THINGS OFF TOO. “That’s fine. I’m fine with everybody writing us off, but that’s what makes us tick. The guys that work on the team that’s what makes you tick. When people tell you you can’t do something, then you want to do it.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED — “I’d like to comment on what happened to us at Michigan. We really didn’t get beat. I don’t consider we got beat on fuel mileage at Michigan. The thing that we needed to do to prove what mileage we had and be able to do what we might have done was to give up all of our track position late in the race — give up the track position and assume there would be no further cautions on the next-to-the-last caution, and we decided not to do that. That’s not the way we race. Three times out of four you’ll get bit doing that. We didn’t want to win that race the way it had to be won. All five of our cars led the race and we didn’t break a part. I stepped away from Michigan as satisfied as I could be. Normally when we win a race, even like tonight, we’ve got Carl Edwards that didn’t do what he might have based on the fact that he had two collisions up front and lost the water out of his radiator late in the race. I’ve got to sleep with that tonight or not sleep with it, but after Michigan I had absolutely nothing to be sad about. We were very happy about that race. We ran well and we’ll win a lot of races with the kind of strategy we had there and with the fuel mileage we had.”

IS MATT THAT CALM BEHIND THE SCENES? “He’s as cold-blooded as any driver I’ve ever worked with. A lot of times when you try to sit down, I’m constantly mulling things over and trying to figure out where is there a weakness, what do we need to do to change things. Many times when things aren’t going well as they were this year we didn’t make any major changes, but I had my finger on the trigger all the time. I’m ready to make a change if I can understand that there’s a consensus that says we’ve got a weakness in an area, but Matt stuck with all of his guys and he stuck with the strategy that we had. He’s got the maturity to know that this is a cyclical business with ups and downs and he was not gonna give up on the good thing he thought he had going when it was down and he was gonna wait for it to turn and it has. He’s been right.”

DO YOU SEE MATT AND JEFF GORDON BUILDING MOMENTUM TO MAKE THE CHASE? “I haven’t paid near as much attention to Jeff Gordon as I have at Matt and I think probably what their prospects are in either case is the stuff of editorials and more your business than mine. But it is important that we peak right. It is important to carry momentum into the chase. If we manage to get in there with the 17 car, I’d be happy to be in 10th place if we can do that. We’ll only be 50 points behind and having done that, I would certainly think that we’d have a very good possibility of being successful with Robbie’s confidence in his guys and with the maturity that Matt has. In 2003 when he won that championship, it was not our best year for our engines in terms of we didn’t have our new D3 cylinder head and I hadn’t made my arrangement with Robert Yates yet to get our engines where they are today. We had a Taurus that hadn’t been changed since ’97. Except for every year from ’97 to 2003, NASCAR gave us a new set of templates that made it less car than it was before, so our engine wasn’t great and our car wasn’t great and the guys overcame that with great pit strategy and great judgments on Matt’s part for the things he’d do in the car. This year we’ve got a great Taurus and a great engine and if we can just get a shot at this thing, it would be awesome.”

ROBBIE REISER CONTINUED — HAVE THE CREW GUYS BEEN POSITIVE ALL YEAR? “I think that’s the beauty of this team right now, yeah. I think those guys were behind it 100 percent. Sure, it wasn’t going right, but they’re all racers that are on the 17 and those guys realize that there are peaks and valleys and they all realize that we were gonna have to work at this thing to get it turned around. Last year when the different setups came in and we were pretty conventional in our aero package and there were some guys running in our company that were running better we had to look at what they were doing and it kind of sent us down a different path and one that was kind of the wrong direction for what we were doing with the 17 car, so it took a little bit to turn that back around and get it straightened out. Matt has been really patient with us during that time. I don’t know if Jack has been pretty patient, but Matt has been pretty patient and believing what we’re doing and the things we’ve got to do. Matt has always believed that we as a race team is as good as we’re gonna be together and not apart. It’s a strength of his that he understands that.”

ROBBIE REISER CONTINUED — WAS THERE ANY FINGER POINTING? “I don’t think there’s ever been any finger pointing. A finger gets pointed at me, but rightfully so, I’m responsible for the way the team runs and the way the team performs. If it doesn’t perform well, it’s my responsibility. Thank God we started to turn it around here because I’d probably be on the outside looking in, but it’s all about the race team.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED — YOU’RE 11 POINTS AWAY FROM HAVING HALF THE CHASE FIELD. “Once they realized what they were doing, I called Mike Helton when they came out with this strategy for this chase last year and I said, ‘Mike, right now there has been a lot of criticism on multi-team programs and it’s growing and getting stronger and it’s gonna continue to do that.’ I predicted last year that we’d put all five. We should have put all five of them in the top 10 and people are gonna say I’m predatory, but we missed a great opportunity to get them all in last year with the brand new Taurus that we didn’t capitalize on. Robbie hit on it. We did not have the latest strategies for springs and aero utilization of the angle of attack of the car. We weren’t doing that the way some teams were doing that last year. We were a little confused with what the new Taurus had to offer, but over the winter when we looked at the data of things gone right and things gone wrong, it became real clear what we needed to build and we built a lot of cars. Robbie and Matt sat down and got busy with their springs and shocks and got on the same page as the competition and the best of the Roush cars and we’ve got a really nice group of cars that can go do pretty much on any given day what anybody can do in the business. If we don’t put them in the top 10, it’s gonna be because I’ve done something to screw them up and I sure don’t want to face that.”

MATT KENSETH — AFTER POCONO WHAT HAPPENED TO TURN IT AROUND? “First of all, we haven’t made it yet. I thought before Daytona, when we got out of Sears Point and went to Daytona, I said all along I thought we could make it, we just couldn’t have any big problems. But there are a couple of hurdles there why I was saying the last few weeks I thought we were out of it. We messed up both Poconos real bad and did so terrible. We were in the late thirties and we were 200-and-some points out and not just 200-and-some points out, but we had six cars in between us and 10th. That’s hard to do. To gain points and have a great day, that can happen with the equipment that we have and all the stuff that we have, but to have five or six people have trouble and have a great day for several weeks in a row is a difficult task. We’ve been a lot more competitive, I think, since around June. There have certainly been some races that we haven’t been competitive and we messed things up, but on average we’ve been much more competitive. I felt like, in a way, we won Michigan on performance last week. A couple of guys made it on gas, but we beat all the cars that were out there on performance and I felt great about that. At Chicago it was the same thing and this weekend we just had an awesome car. They looked at what we did in the spring here and figured out what they did wrong with the car and put it all back and got everything pointed in the right direction and working right and it showed. You could make changes and it would change the car. We just have awesome engines and we have great cars and if we can do the right things to them and not mess them up, they can run like that.”

I DON’T THINK YOU GOT PASSED ON THE TRACK TONIGHT. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU HAD A CAR LIKE THAT? “We had a car like that at Pikes Peak. That first Busch race we ran at Pikes Peak we had an awfully good car. We had a car this good, and I can’t say it was better, but at least as good at Chicago and ended up getting behind on track position and didn’t win it, but we had car that was that dominant. It was just awesome. This car was pretty much the same thing. If we would have had 150-lap run, I think we would have been not as dominant as we looked. I think we would have been a little slower at the end of the run, but this car was really, really fast for a 70 or 80-lap run. We were all over them for 20 or 30 or 40 laps. It was a lot of fun to drive it like that.”

DID YOU GET PASSED? “Not that I know of. Not that I’m aware of. I think the farthest back we were all day was sixth place when some guys stayed out and we worked our way back to the lead. We had a great car, especially on fresh tires. Robbie did a great job calling the race and all of the cautions kind of fell in the right place for that. There were some 10-lap cautions. We’d run 10 laps and have a caution, so we knew we were gonna stay out and then we’d run 30 or 40 laps and with us being the leader — a few guys that did stay out just got killed. They didn’t get tires — so everybody knew they needed tires if you ran 30 or 40 laps and everybody came down with us and that made all of our jobs down there a little bit easier. Usually at this place you’ll have 15 cars stay out and you’ll have 15 cars pit and you get yourself way behind, but everybody knew that they needed tires tonight and that made it a little bit easier.”

HOW BIG WAS YOUR SPOTTER TONIGHT AND WHAT ABOUT YOUR CHANCES THE NEXT TWO RACES. “The spotters are probably most important at Daytona and Talladega and then at Bristol they’re important too to watch for accidents. Things happen in a big hurry here. There’s only so much they can do, but they’re definitely important. When you’re in the front, that’s the easiest job they’ll ever have. When you’re out front and you’re catching people from behind and passing them that’s an easier job for them. I never like to get overly confident about anything, but I think unless something goes wrong, which it certainly could easy enough, I think that we’ll be very competitive at California. We have a car that we ran at Chicago and Michigan and it performed good enough to win both of those races and I think it will perform the same at California. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t have a flat tire or a bad pit stop or a broken part or eye bracket or something like that, but I do think that we’ll go there and be competitive enough to run up front and, hopefully, challenge for a win. I just believe that car is a really, really, really good car. It’s been really great at both of those tracks and if we put the right stuff into that, I think it will run up front.”

DO YOU BELIEVE IN PEAKING? “I don’t know how I can answer about sports teams for sure, but I know in our business that momentum is very important. It’s a weird thing. If we do make the chase and we do get to the top 10, I’ll feel really good about it — not just because we made the top 10 because, to me, it’s not just about making the top 10. I mean, if I’m gonna finish seventh in points or 12th in points, honestly, I don’t really care. If we make the top 10, I want to make the top 10 with a chance at winning a championship. Last year we made the top 10, I felt like in my heart that we weren’t gonna run for a championship anyway. I didn’t think we were running good enough. I just didn’t feel like we had our ducks in a row to do that and we ended up finishing eighth with some mistakes I made and so on. This year, the way we’ve run the last couple months if we were more consistent, but our performance is so good that I feel like if we could slide our way in there right now, we’re on a high note and I do think momentum does carry for a while. You could see it with Greg at the beginning of the year and, yeah, he’s still running really great, but in the beginning of the year he couldn’t do nothing wrong. If we’re lucky enough to get in a stretch like that and carry that on for a few races in the chase, I feel like we’re running good enough to be a threat. It’s only five points a position and if we can get in that, I think we could be a threat to challenge everybody with the way everybody is running right now. That’s what I feel the best about.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED — NICE TO TALK ABOUT A WIN OPPOSED TO THE OTHER STUFF? “I don’t know if anybody has read or kept track of my interviews, but I basically haven’t commented on anything outside of our press release as it relates to Kurt and the dilemma that we’ve got in dealing with that situation. The structure that surrounds our business, we need rules for the technical aspects of it and we need rules and guidelines and make commitments that work for our business and I guess we’re gonna have some trials with those things right now to see if the structure we’ve got with our business works so we can make guarantees. But I’m looking to Kurt being in my 97 car for Newell Rubbermaid, Sharpie and Diageo to the extent that they negotiate with one another and get happy with it in 2006 and then we’ll make new plans for 2007.”

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED — ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT RICHMOND? “Yes, I’m thinking about Richmond, but I’m not thinking about it because of the chase. I’m thinking about Richmond because we’re going there Monday and Tuesday to test our Cup car and Wednesday to test our Busch car, so that’s why I’m thinking about it right now. I’ve been trying to think of ideas of things that I can add to try to think of some different ideas to test also because we’re gonna be testing there. That’s the only reason I’m thinking about it. We’re closer right now, but you’ve still got to have everything go right. I don’t want to downplay it too much, but we’ve got to go to California and all do our jobs again like we did tonight and like we did last week and go there and get a great finish. If we can get a great finish and run like we did at Chicago and Michigan last week, and have a good solid top-five or top-10 car, then I’ll start thinking about Richmond a little bit more. I am thinking about testing there, but I’m more thinking about California and taking that really nice car that we’ve got there. We as a group owe that car a win, so I would like to go up there and run good at California and, hopefully, challenge for a win.”

ROBBIE REISER CONTINUED — DOES THIS REMIND YOU OF MATT IN WISCONSIN? “The way he ran the race tonight was the way our race team operated for a lot of years. We just worked together. We didn’t get excited when things went right or went wrong, we just dealt with whatever situation we had. Tonight was pretty dominating and that’s the way you want to run a race team. Matt, as long as I’ve known him, that’s the way we operate. Usually when we don’t operate like that, that’s when we’ve got trouble.”

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED — WHY HAVE THINGS BEEN ROUGH FOR YOU AT TIMES ON SHORT TRACKS? “I don’t think it has been. In 2003 when we won the championship, we had the best average finish at the short tracks, and I think we did in 2002 also. We won Richmond and won Phoenix, so I don’t think we have honestly. We have at Martinsville, but I feel like at the rest of the short tracks, besides Martinsville, I think short tracks has been one of our strong points. I think we have a really great record here at Bristol. We hadn’t won, but we have a great record. In the spring we had a bad finish, but we were running third and had a flat with 10 to go. I think we’ve done fairly well.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT STARTING WITH ROBBIE? “When I started driving Robbie’s Busch cars, we never went and practiced or tested or anything. My first race with Robbie was kind of trial by fire. I met him in Nashville, Tennessee, and that was my first racing experience with Robbie and his first experience with me racing together. Let’s not talk about when we raced against each other. We get along much better racing together than against each other.”

YOU SEEMED AGGRESSIVE OUT THERE. “I think I was pretty patient. If anyone was watching the part of the race when I was trying to watch Mike Wallace, that took every ounce of restraint that I had from not punting him. I was under him and he cut me off several times and Rusty was two seconds behind me and caught me and was ready to pass me, that’s how bad it was and I never laid a fender to him because we had such a good car. It would have been silly to get into somebody and mess up your fender or have them slide into you or whatever. I knew I had a good enough car and I knew I was gonna get by him. I was like a bad doctor, I was running out of patience.”

THANKS FOR PROVING YOU CAN WIN FROM THE FRONT. “The reason we never won from the front was that we never started there. We’ve always qualified so bad.”

IS IT MORE CRUCIAL TO HIT YOUR MARKS HERE? “Maybe a little bit, but I think that every track is different. Everybody has their own little niche where they’re maybe a little better at or a little worse at, but I’ve always been a believer that there are a lot of really great race car drivers in the garage. I think almost anybody out there in the right car could win the race, so it’s about the equipment Jack provides us and the guys putting it together and trying to communicate well enough together to put the right setup in it to get it to run that good. These cars, they are tough to drive but they are easier to drive when they’re driving good. When you can get them to handle that good and run up front, that will be one of your easier days usually. It’s just different. There’s a lot more going on here. Things happen quicker. It’s maybe a little easier to lose control of your car and stuff like that, but it’s just different. I can’t say it’s really easier or harder than most tracks. There are some tracks that are definitely simpler, where the groove is right on the white line and it’s nice and smooth and big and wide — that are maybe a little easier to drive — but every track has it’s own little thing.”

WHAT IS MIKE WALLACE’S DEAL? “He’s just trying to stay on the lead lap. It was no big thing. Everything was alright. I was just a little impatient because there was gonna be an accident. When I was catching people to lap them, there was always a common denominator. I’m not saying any of it was his fault, but he was fighting very, very, very hard to stay on the lead lap. When people got under him he’d come down a little bit and it just seemed like there was a lot of contact there. I didn’t want to mess my car up so good and I didn’t want to make a mistake and scrape something off. It’s his job to run that car as hard as he can and try to stay on the lead lap and do that. It just seemed like it was a little extreme the one time I caught him. It was just a little more difficult than I would have made it for anybody.”

WHAT DID YOUR CAR LOOK LIKE AFTER? “I just had a couple teenie little bumps. I think Jeff bumped me a little bit on the last corner there. I got a terrible restart. I’m not gonna complain about having too much power, but I’d just spin the tires through every gear. I was a little bit psycho on that and trying to get the tires to hook up and spinning the tires. Jeff got real close to me and then Carl was coming out of the pits or doing something. I’m not sure exactly what he was doing, but I got under him going into one on the restart and Jeff was right up behind me. There was a little tense moment there, but other than that, one time there was a wreck and I just barely bumped into the back of Dale Jr., but I don’t think there’s a scratch on the car that I saw.”

ROBBIE REISER CONTINUED — ARE YOU SO FOCUSED ON THE CHASE THAT YOU’RE ELEVATING YOUR PERFORMANCE? “I don’t think it has anything to do with the chase, I think it has to do with racing. I think all of us are disappointed with the way we raced this year and we’ve all been working hard trying to get our deal turned around. We go to California, we go to Richmond, we go to any races, even if we don’t make the top 10 we’re gonna try to win those races. That’s what we do. That’s our job. It would be great to get in the chase and go for the championship, but, ultimately, every week we go we try to win races and win championships. That’s what this is all about.”

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED — “If I can just add to that, exactly what Robbie said. I think a lot of the pressure and a lot of the stuff about making a big drive, that’s all kind of media induced and fun to watch and fun to keep track of — it’s fun for everybody to watch points and all of that stuff, but, for us — at least for me and I know Robbie — we approach these races the same every week. Making the chase starts at Daytona. It didn’t start two weeks ago or a month ago — whenever we started running better. Growing up short track racers you approach every race the same. You show up every week with your best game and your best stuff and work as hard as you can and get the best result that you can get that day. At least for me, I don’t think it matters if we’re 30th in points or third in points, we’d run things exactly the same as we are right now.”

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED — ELABORATE ON WANTING TO WIN AT DAYTONA AND BRISTOL? “I think the Daytona 500 is something everybody would like to win. It’s just different. It’s a plate race and there’s just so much more luck and car and just a lot more stuff involved. There are definitely people better at drafting than others and this and that, but there’s not near as much driver input there and driving the car and all that stuff at other race tracks. I like Indy too, but Robbie has always really wanted to win Indy, so that’s one of the reasons that’s on the top of my list. Russ Strupp and some of the guys that have always been on our Busch team, the top of their list was always to win the Bristol night race, so that’s why I thought of that. It’s a big race. It’s a really cool party atmosphere. For the first three years I raced, we were racing in the Busch Series — a little house on the lake, we used to race here Friday night and have a little party on Saturday night and watch the Bristol race and hang out up there. Some of those guys are still the same group — Robbie and Russ and Todd (Millard) and a few of those guys. We always wanted to race here and then when we raced here we saw how cool it is. It’s really a spectacle to be here and see all these people and all the crowd and all this stuff. It’s something we always wanted to do was win this race.”

HOW DOES THIS RANK? “I think this is definitely a race a lot of people want to win. Here and Darlington — the Southern 500. It doesn’t quite have the same significance as when it was on Labor Day, but that was always a really tough, hot, long, slick race. That was a very difficult one, so I think the Southern 500, Bristol, Indy — the World 600 in Charlotte — those are probably four of the biggest races that I’d want to win.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN IF ALL FIVE ROUSH GUYS MAKE THE CHASE? “I don’t know if it will be an advantage or anything like that. I don’t think it will be anymore or less of an advantage if we were in there or not in there. However many tests we have left, we’re certainly gonna use them no matter where we are in the points and try to run the best we can the rest of the year — no matter where we end up, whether we make it or not. Right now, we all work really good together. I’ve got four really great teammates. They all communicate really good together. The crews seem to be working together better than ever and they’re building great race cars over there. Everybody is doing a good job working together. It’s a lot of fun. I have a lot of fun with all my teammates. They always try to help you out and we try to do the same thing back, if you can, but there’s not a lot you can do on a race track. If you’re all racing for the same spot and all racing for the points, you’re not gonna do a lot to help each other out, you’re gonna try to take care of yourself first, but, certainly, if you can help them without hurting yourself, you’re always gonna try to do that no matter where you’re racing with your teammates.”

HOW TOUGH WAS IT EARLY IN THE SEASON SEEING YOUR TEAMMATES RUN WELL? “First of all, when your teammates are winning you’re very happy for them, but in another way when they’re winning and you’re not winning, you start looking at yourself. You’re certainly not jealous of them or anything like that, but maybe you get down a little bit on yourself or wonder why we’re not winning and they’re out running good. On the other side of the coin, there have been years like 2002 and the beginning of 2003 where we’ve run really well and some of our teammates maybe haven’t run quite as well. So it all kind of works in cycles. All five cars can’t be winning every week, although that’s what we aim for and that’s what Jack would like to see. This is a pretty cool year. Mark won the all-star race and all the other four teams have won races also, so all five of Jack’s teams have been to victory lane and that’s a huge accomplishment for a car owner and as an organization. So it’s fun to be part of. I really enjoy working with those guys and happy to be driving these cars for sure.”

Matt gets the pole at Bristol!
August 26, 2005

With a quick time of 15.073, Matt nudges Jeff Gordon off the pole by .012 at Bristol for the Sharpie 500.

High quality qualification video (15 meg)
Low quality qualification video (6 meg)
High quality interview video (22 meg)
Low quality interview video (6 meg)

Post-Qualifying Quotes

MATT KENSETH — No. 17 DeWalt Taurus (Qualified 1st) —
“It’s been a while. We’ve only won two poles. We won one at Dover a few years ago, so it feels great. It was a great lap. We’ve got a great car for the race tomorrow night. I didn’t think it would qualify that fast, but everybody did a great job. It was pretty fun to beat the 24 off the pole because he’s always known for being so good here.”

WHERE DID THAT LAP COME FROM? “Well, a couple of things. First, we had a really good draw obviously. The weather is really good right now. We had a good car in practice and worked on race setup the whole time. Greg Biffle and Doug Richert really helped us out a lot. They gave us all the air pressures and all the stuff they did to qualify so good. We just threw that in our car and got a good lap.”

CAN YOU STILL GET IN THE TOP 10? “Anything is possible. I still think it’s kind of a stretch with all of those cars in between, but we’ll have to see. We just have to run as hard as we can every week and try to lead some laps and win some races, hopefully. Maybe we’ll get back in it and maybe we won’t.”

WHAT IS THE TEAM’S FRAME OF MIND FOR TOMORROW? “Everybody is pumped up. With this impound deal everything happens so fast. You come here and you practice two hours straight and then you work for four hours and then qualify. It’s tough to get all that stuff done that fast and to do it right. They did a great job of turning this car around. The 16 helped us a lot. We used a lot of their stuff and the car was really good. I actually think I could have gone a little faster if I could do it again, but it was a great lap.”

MATT KENSETH POLE-WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE

WHAT HAPPENED TONIGHT? “I got lucky, I guess (laughing). We had a really good car in practice. I was real happy with what we did. We didn’t do any mock up qualifying runs, but we had a really good car and got a really good draw. We went out late and just did everything right. It feels good. We’ve got a great car for the race and it will be good to be starting up front.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE RACE TOMORROW? “Every week we talk about track position and how important it is and, obviously, it’s as important or more important at this track than any other track. It’s difficult to pass. There’s always trouble that you can get yourself in, which can happen anywhere. It can happen when you’re up front, too, for that matter. It’s definitely important to be up front. There’s really no openings on pit road, so there aren’t a lot of good pit stalls, so it’s good to get that first pit stall and have an opening leaving all day no matter where you’re running. That’s a good thing. To try to get out front and try to lead some laps — at least the first couple, hopefully — and get some bonus points to continue our surge toward the top 10. We’re running out of time in a hurry, but yet we’ve made up some ground, too, so we’ve got to keep trying.”

ARE YOU SURPRISED TO BE ON THE POLE? “Yeah, for some reason I was pretty confident before we qualified. For some reason we were all kind of joking about it, but I’m definitely surprised it was a pole. I didn’t expect that, but I did expect to qualify pretty well tonight. My teammates all qualified pretty well. Greg went real fast for how early he went and I thought we could run a pretty good lap. I’m surprised that was the pole for sure and surprised it was that fast, but I expected to be somewhere respectable.”

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A SEASON LIKE THIS BEFORE WITH FEW HIGH POINTS? “We’ve had seasons a lot worse than this. Last season we started off really strong and won a couple of races, but the last half of last year wasn’t very good and 2001 was absolutely miserable. So I have had some years that haven’t been great. This year has had some good points. We’ve run really, really well at certain tracks and had a lot of bad luck. There certainly have been tracks where we haven’t run well and haven’t done a good job and maybe haven’t made good decisions — that type of thing — but there have been some places we’ve run really good. This place in the spring we just kind of hung around all day with 40 or 30 to go. We were running third and got a flat tire out there running under green, so we’ve had a lot of weeks like that, too. So statistically our season doesn’t look that good, but I think it’s been a little bit better than that, and it definitely has been showing promise the last three or four months. If you took the Poconos out of there and Watkins Glen out of there, we’ve done pretty well since probably mid-June or something like that.”

HAVE YOU HAD ANY CHANCE TO WORK WITH THE NEW FUSION YET? “No. There are a few interesting things coming up. You’ve got the new model change coming out, which, it might surprise me, but in my mind that’s not gonna be a big deal. NASCAR has all these common templates and they’ve got all these things going on. You’re gonna have a nose and a tail change, so it’s gonna be a little more efficient and it’s gonna be a little bit better, but it’s gonna be very little and the windows are gonna look a little different, so, really, I think all the cars are pretty close to the same. I don’t think it’s gonna be dramatically different than what we have. I haven’t really got to look at it that much yet. We haven’t worked with it. We haven’t built anything or put it in the tunnel. We haven’t really had any involvement in that. Ford kind of did that, so I don’t really know exactly what we have there. I guess the biggest thing everybody is kind of talking about now is that new car deal they’re coming out with in a couple of years. I think that’s gonna be a huge change, which everybody is gonna have to do. But as far as next year’s model, I’m not really worried about it. I’m not thinking it’s gonna be way better than what we have. I don’t think it’s gonna be way worse than what we have. It’ll probably be about what we have, maybe just a little bit better, and it’s gonna look a little bit different.”

ARE YOU HAPPY AT ROUSH? THERE HAVE BEEN SOME RUMORS? “I haven’t been reading anything. That keeps me in a way better mood. I’m happy over there. I think the thing with Kurt surprised a lot of people and I think, for some reason in this sport, especially with what’s happened with Kurt and Jamie, obviously, people speculate more and there is a lot of rides that people are maybe looking for an experienced driver or looking for somebody. So I think that’s what starts the rumors. I’m very happy at Roush. Kurt’s thing — I sort of understand it but I sort of don’t. They just won a championship and a couple of races this year, and are in the chase for this year pretty much guaranteed unless they really have problems. I really enjoy it over there. We have great stuff. I don’t think you could ask for better equipment with Doug Yates and everybody doing engines. They’re just second to none out there and Jack gives us everything we need to compete, and I can’t think of anywhere else where I’d go and be more competitive right now. Everybody has a little bit different of an agenda, but for me it’s competing and it’s running good and it’s winning races and being competitive. That’s what all of us guys that started off on short tracks, that’s why we started racing was for the love of the sport and for the love of trying to win and do good. If I look around just from the outside, I don’t see anywhere where I would do that or have a better chance at winning than where I’m at.”

ANY THOUGHT ON WHERE YOU NEED TO FINISH TOMORROW? “Honestly, a guy could sit and analyze that as much as they want. We’ve already won 23 races or something this year and you could look to any race and say this is the race we lost the points or this is the race we did good and gained points or whatever. In all actuality, you run the best you can run every week no matter where you are in the points, no matter how you’ve been running all year. You do the best you can every week. You finish as high as you can every week for the circumstances that you have. There’s nobody that can take a 25th-place car and win with it, but the thing you do have to make sure you do is you don’t take a winning car and finish 25th with it. Really, where we’re at in points — and not so much being 100-and-something out of there — but having five or six cars in between you, we basically have to almost win every week and lead a lot of laps and hope other people have misfortune.”

WOULD YOU ANTICIPATE MORE DRAMA TOMORROW? “I don’t know. I don’t think so. There will be more to talk about if you see one of the guys that fall out or something, so there might be more drama, I guess, watching it or reporting about it or writing about it or watching the TV and that stuff, but as far as in the car it won’t be any extra drama. You’re running as hard as you can run. If something happens to you, it happens to you. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We’re so far out that I don’t really worry about the points. I feel like since we had our last terrible Pocono — we had two of them — but since we had our last terrible Pocono I felt like we were pretty much out of it. Surprisingly, we’ve made up a lot of ground and we’re a lot closer than I anticipated we’d be, even after a very, very mediocre at best at Watkins Glen, so it does show me that if some people have some problems and you can lead some laps and finish in the top five, you can get a lot of points and you can gain a lot of points. So I think that’s our goal is to get our stuff running as good as we can every weekend and try to lead laps and finish as high as we can.”

IS IT HARD ON THE TEAM WHEN RUMORS ABOUT THE DRIVER LEAVING START? “I don’t think so. I don’t think it does at all, really. Look at Jamie and Kurt’s situation. They’ve got a year-and-a-half of working with guys and they told them they are leaving for sure, so I’ve said I wasn’t leaving and I’m happy. So I don’t see how rumors would really affect that. Kurt could have won the race last week. He led the most laps and was in position to win until he got off a little bit on that last long run, so I don’t think that affects that at all, especially these days. As big as the business is, everybody is pretty professional in the garage area and everybody is out there to do a job. It’s truly a team sport. They’re part of that team and they don’t want to not see that car finish good because maybe their driver is leaving or whatever it may be. In my situation, I’m not worried about it at all because I’m happy where I’m at and I’m certainly planning on being there.”

IS IT MORE IMPORTANT TO RUN WELL OR WIN SOME RACES THE REST OF THE YEAR? “I think both. I don’t think you could say more important — one or the other. It’s important to run good and be consistent and try to have shots at winning, but there have been a couple of races this year — Chicago and Michigan — where as far as beating the competition we won, but we weren’t the first one across the finish line and that’s frustrating. Yeah, you really want to win, but you want to win every week. As long as our performance is up more than what it’s been and we can run up front and be up in the top five and lead laps and do all of those things, the wins will eventually come. I think the main thing is to have our performance better than what it has been, and it’s been looking like it’s been better on average. It’s still not as consistent as we used to be in ‘03 and some of the other times when we had real good years, but it’s getting better.”

SHOULD THERE BE A FORMULA IN THE POINTS FOR WINNING RACES AND THAT COUNTING MORE? “No. There is a benefit. There are 10 extra points everytime you win, so there is a benefit for that and that’s five more points than it used to be until last year, so I think there is. It’s not football where it’s one team against another. It’s one team against 42 others and there has to be a way of ranking that. It’s not just all about winning every week, it’s about doing a good job at each and every race track — all the different shapes and sizes we race at. We don’t play on the same field and we don’t play one team every week. It’s a lot different, so I think you still have to rank that. A team that’s running sixth every week is certainly more worthy than a team that finishes 25th every week and lucks out in a race or circumstances and wins a race. They’re certainly better than that, so I think you have to award teams for their performance and they’re consistency as well.”

IS IT ODD YOU HAVEN’T WON A RACE WHERE YOU’VE STARTED BETTER THAN 17TH? “Really, I used to look at that statistic a lot and be kind of superstitious too, but when you haven’t won in a year-and-a-half you don’t look at any of those statistics because you’ve been starting all over the place and haven’t won. I looked at that, but really through those years this year has been much better for qualifying, at least it feels it has been on average. But if you look through those years our qualifying was horrid, so it wasn’t that we didn’t win starting farther forward than that, we just never started farther forward than that hardly in all actuality. I used to be really superstitious about starting up front. We always had trouble. When we won the pole at Dover, we blew up in practice and had to go to the back because we put an engine in it. A lot of times we start up front we have problems early, but we started fourth at Chicago and led all day long. I felt good about that. I can’t remember where we started last week, but we finished up well. I don’t really worry about it that much. I think it’s more because we never qualified that well.”

DO YOU KEEP ALL OF YOUR EMOTIONS INSIDE PRETTY WELL? “You don’t live with me. If my wife was here you wouldn’t be saying that. I think you have to keep somewhat of an even keel, especially when you’re dealing with your team and your guys. You always need to try to be upbeat or at least if you have a bad day to go to the shop on Monday or Tuesday and try to fix it. You definitely want to try to fix what your problems are, but remain upbeat and positive and keep everybody going. I definitely have highs and lows. They’re probably not as big as a lot of other drivers. My happiness probably doesn’t show through as much as some other drivers maybe when they win and my frustration probably doesn’t show as much maybe as some other drivers when I’m having a real bad day. But I still definitely have them and maybe it doesn’t show as much from the outside. I think that you have to keep an even keel as much as you can. I really believe that helps you with your consistency because when you’re having a bad day, if you just lose your mind it’s gonna be a worse day, where if you’re having a bad day and you just keep working on it and plug through it and get through it, you can at least salvage something decent from it.”

DO YOU KICK YOURSELF WITH THE WAY THINGS STARTED THIS YEAR? “No, because I don’t think the whole first half of the season was all my fault. I’m sure there are some things I didn’t do right, but it’s a team sport and our cars weren’t running as good. We’ve had flat tires. We broke stuff. We’ve had all kinds of stuff happen. I don’t think it was all driver induced. I mean, if it were all driver induced, yeah, I’d be kicking myself but I don’t believe it all was. I’m sure some of it was, but, really, as long as everybody is putting in 100 percent and we’re working as hard as we can work and they give us competitive equipment — which they have — we just have to figure out what to do with it. I’m happy. They’re giving us everything we need to win with, we just have to keep trying to put that together and figure out how to win with it.”