New Hampshire race recap
June 30, 2008

No. 17 DeWALT FORD FUSION RECAP:
KENSETH AND No. 17 DEWALT TEAM EXPERIENCE DISAPPOINTING DAY AT NEW HAMPSHIRE

Race Summary Start: 9th Mid-race: 16th 31 to go: 11th Finish: 18th High: 9th Low: 25th Fastest Laps: 2 Laps in top 15: 179 Laps: 284/284 Led: 0 Status: Running Points: 109 Earnings: $122,241 Points Summary Race Total: 109 Season Total: 2001 Ranked: 13th, 15 behind 12th

Matt Kenseth came to New Hampshire Motor Speedway on the heels of six consecutive top-10 finishes. The driver of the No. 17 DEWALT Ford wanted nothing more than to continue this streak, but two late-race cautions and Mother Nature ruined what could have been another top-10 finish. Kenseth took the green flag in the ninth position after laying down a lap time of 29.612 seconds during Friday afternoon’s time trials. Throughout the 284-lap (shortened by 17 laps due to rain) event, Kenseth battled a loose-handling car, however throughout several adjustments made in scheduled pit stops, Kenseth had worked his way up to 11th-place. When it looked as though Kenseth may be in top-10 contention, he was forced to pit for fuel. Just 13 laps later the race was red flagged and ultimately called for rain. Kenseth finished 18th and fell from 12th to 13th in the overall point standings.

French-Canadian Patrick Carpentier, started from the pole for this first time in his NASCAR Sprint Cup career. Kenseth rolled off ninth, but soon fell back to 12th place, reporting that the No. 17 was experiencing loose handling conditions.

By the first round of green flag pit stops on lap 68, Kenseth had fallen back to 17th. Crew chief Chip Bolin prescribed four tires with air pressure adjustments; along with a track bar adjustment, in hopes of remedying the handling problems. After the pit stop, Kenseth rejoined the race scored in the 15th position.

Throughout the race and a series of scheduled pit stops, Kenseth continued to battle a loose handling car and the No. 17 team would continue to make adjustments. However nothing really seemed to help, though Kenseth continued to make gains on the track. By lap 203 he was running 13th and turning lap times comparable to the leaders.

On lap 216, Bolin directed Kenseth to conserve fuel. Rain was in the forecast and Kenseth’s No. 17 was 10 laps shy of making it to the end of the 301-lap event on fuel.

The fuel mileage strategy would be altered as an accident that sent all the leaders to the pits happened on lap 271. Kenseth entered the pits in 10th place for two tires and fuel. However, when the race restarted with just 23 laps to go he was scored in the 19th position, as not all competitors opted to pit.

Kenseth would do his best to make up ground, however rain began to fall and the race was red flagged and ultimately called on lap 284.

“We didn’t run as good as I hoped,” said Kenseth. I thought the car was better than that and it really wasn’t, plus we could never get track position. We couldn’t get on pit road and the way the race played out; we just couldn’t do anything except for about what we did. With the rain and all, some people pitted and some people didn’t. I think we did the right thing. We did what all the rest of the guys in front of us did and it just didn’t work out.”

When the race was called for rain and the field was frozen, Kurt Busch was declared the winner. Michael Waltrip, J.J. Yeley, Martin Truex Jr., and Elliott Sadler completed the top five.

The disappointing 18th-place finish for the DEWALT crew at New Hampshire puts the No. 17 team 13th in point standings — just 15 points out of 12th-place Chase contention.

NEXT UP:
Coke Zero 400 • Daytona International Speedway • Saturday, July 5

New Hampshire Friday interview
June 27, 2008

An interview with MATT KENSETH — No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion

IT MUST FEEL GOOD TO BE BACK IN THE TOP 12. “Yeah. We’ve still got a lot of work to do, a lot of races left, I think, before the cutoff and we slipped in right now, but we certainly have our goals set a lot higher than where we are.”

WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST IMPROVEMENT? “Honestly, it’s been a little bit of everything. It’s been improving in every area. If we look at all the problems that we’ve had this year and sit down and kind of analyze them, we’ve had a little bit of everything. We’ve not put together some stuff not right. I’ve made some mistakes driving. We’ve just had a little bit of everything happen, so we’ve been able to try and fine-tune the whole program. I think everybody is working better together right now as a unit. I think we’re getting better on pit road. The car is getting prepared better. I think Chip and I have been able to communicate a little bit better and, hopefully, I’ve been able to give them a little better information to get our cars running better.”

HOW MUCH OF A CHALLENGE HAS IT BEEN SWITCHING FROM ROBBIE? “It hasn’t really been a challenge necessarily for Chip and I. I think there are some different parts to his job compared to what he was used to doing has maybe been a little bit of a challenge for him, but our communication and everything has been good. A lot of it has been my fault. This car is a lot different than the other car that we used to have and I needed to try to work harder to understand it and give him better feedback so he could help me get the car to drive the way I wanted it to.”

IS 12TH A HURDLE OR IS IT MEANINGLESS AT THIS POINT? “It’s not meaningless. I think the points from Daytona all the way to Richmond, every one counts. It’s not meaningless, but the cutoff is not today, so we certainly want to keep trying to move our way forward. Certainly we’ve got goals to try to win races and get in there farther and get up in the points farther and get some cushion on 13th.”

WHAT AREAS DO YOU NEED TO WORK ON TO SOLIDIFY YOUR SPOT? “We’ve got to keep being consistent. We have to keep from making mistakes. We’re really close, but we just need to get a little better. I think at Michigan we had a car that performance-wise was capable of winning and that’s really the first time since Vegas that we had a car that was a serious contender to win the race. It all starts there. If we can bring cars to the race track that are prepared and are fast enough to go up there and run in the top five and contend for wins, if you don’t make mistakes, the rest of it will kind of take care of itself on average.”

HAS THIS COMEBACK BEEN ANYMORE TAXING THAN PAST YEARS? “Not yet, but there’s so much racing to do. I don’t know where we’re gonna be a week from now or five weeks from now. There’s a lot of time left. Honestly, I wasn’t and I’m not really concerned about our points position. I was more concerned with how we were running and how we were operating and me getting in wrecks like we were at Richmond and running in the back. I was more concerned about all of that stuff because if you fix all that stuff, usually you’ll get better finishing positions and the points will take care of themselves. So, really, I was more concerned about getting the whole thing rolling and getting everybody’s attitudes good and the momentum rolling and getting a spring in everybody’s step and get working together like we know we’re capable of doing.”

WHY DON’T WE SEE DRIVERS WITH TEAMS FOR LONGER THAN 10 YEARS? “I don’t know. I can’t really speak of anybody’s situation except for mine. As far as mine goes, I’ve always been really happy being at Roush Fenway Racing. Fortunately, they’ve been happy enough with me to hold onto me. I’ve had a great group of guys, a great team, our sponsor has been there the whole time. We’ve been able to keep a lot of that stuff together for the 10 years that we’ve been there and that’s been the biggest difference for me. I don’t know as a driver why you would ever want to make a change unless you were 100 percent sure it was gonna be better, or was fairly sure you were gonna better yourself and you were gonna be able to run better. Really, all the years that I’ve been there, I can’t think of a time where I’ve ever asked Jack for something that we needed to make our race cars run faster, or we needed to make things better at the shop and he hasn’t given it to us or given it to me. He always gives us whatever we need to be competitive and, as a driver, that’s all I’ve ever wanted. If they give you everything you need to go run good, what else could you want?”

HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO SEE GREG RE-SIGN? “Well, I think it was really good. I think it frees up some space in the paper and websites and stuff because there have been about 15-20 articles written about his contract in the last 14 months, so I’m glad I don’t have to read that for a couple more years (joking). But, seriously, Greg is a good friend of mine. I enjoy having him as part of the team. We work really well together. We both like our cars set up similarly, it seems like, so we’re always able to talk about things and make our stuff better, and we have a good time racing together.”

DO YOU ENJOY RUNNING HERE? “This hasn’t necessarily been one of my favorite tracks or I haven’t felt like it’s one of my strongest tracks, but yet if you look at our stats, our finishes have usually been pretty good. It’s always been a challenge. It’s a challenge to pass here, although they’ve made it better over the years after they re-configured the track a while back, so it’s just one of those tracks that’s a challenge. It’s a little bit unique and it’s one that makes us work hard, that’s for sure.”

ANY DIFFERENCE THE FIRST RACE HERE KNOWING YOU COME BACK TO START THE CHASE AT THIS SAME PLACE? “Not really. Where we are in points and what we’re doing, we don’t do anything different. We bring what we think is our best car every week. We work on it as hard as we can to go run good that day and try to win that day and learn as much as we can, so we don’t really do anything different thinking that far ahead.”

WHAT ABOUT DAYTONA AT DAY AND NIGHT? “I think it’s not really that different. In July, generally the track is really slick — even at night really because it’s usually pretty hot there — so the 400 from the 500 is not really that big of a change. The cars might be grouped up a little more. The race might have a little more action to it, but, really, how far the tires drop off and how your car handles and how slick the track is really dictates how the racing is and how much side-by-side and two- and three-wide racing they have. A lot of times it will get so slick there in the summer that you have to kind of run single-file until you get new tires on or you get a caution to bunch them up.”

New Hampshire Race Preview
June 25, 2008

New Hampshire Motor Speedway • Loudon, N.H.
LENOX Industrial Tools 301 • Sunday, June 29 • 12:30 pm/e TNT

Sprint Cup chassis — #17 DeWALT Ford Fusion
• Primary — RK-606 (Raced Pocono in June of this year, started 13th, finished 7th)

        
Matt Kenseth’s NHMS performance summary:

Date	S	F	Laps	Led	Reason
09/16/07	30	7	300/300	0	Running
07/01/07	30	9	300/300	2	Running
09/17/06	25	10	300/300	1	Running
07/16/06	24	14	308/308	0	Running
09/19/05	4	3	300/300	0	Running
07/17/05	16	10	300/300	0	Running
09/19/04	5	2	300/300	0	Running
07/25/04	31	4	300/300	0	Running
09/14/03	19	7	300/300	7	Running
07/20/03	1	3	300/300	1	Running
09/15/02	17	10	207/207	0	Running
07/21/02	6	33	299/300	77	Running
11/23/01	16	4	300/300	0	Running
07/22/01	21	16	300/300	0	Running
09/17/00	38	17	298/300	0	Running
07/09/00	22	19	272/273	0	Running

     
Matt Kenseth New Hampshire totals:

	Races	Wins	Top 5s	Top 10s	Laps Led	Poles
Cumulative	16	0	5	11	0	88

      
Matt Kenseth on racing at New Hampshire:

“We usually have good finishes at New Hampshire, but it seems like we’re never that competitive. I don’t really know why that is. It seems like every time we go there, we’ll run around 12th to 15th all day, but we usually do a good job with pit strategy and have good stops, so we’ll come away with a seventh or 10th-place finish. Hopefully, we can do a little better than that this weekend.

“Our entire program has definitely improved and I feel like we’re making a lot of gains, especially after our top-10 finish last weekend at Sonoma. But we still aren’t quite where we need to be to keep up with some of those guys. There are four or five teams running really well right now, and if we’re going to have a shot, then we have to continue to improve. I’m still really proud of Chip and the guys for all of their hard work each week and I know that if we all continue to do our jobs, we’ll be fine.”

Crew Chief Chip Bolin on racing at New Hampshire:

“We’ve been preparing this car for awhile now. We built it especially for Pocono and had a really decent run with it there, so I feel like we have a good piece. The 99 was pretty fast the last time we went to Loudon and we were able to learn some things from what they did. So, hopefully we’ll unload and be competitive from the get-go.

“Team 17 has done an incredible job of fighting their way back into the top 12. I’m pleased with our improvements and look forward to continuing to build on our consistency. The Chase is just around the corner and is really what it’s all about. The reason that the guys on this team do what they do and work as hard as they do is to win a championship. There really isn’t any other goal on this team, so now’s the time for us to step up and perform and really bring out the ‘A Game.’ I feel like our team is as good as any out there and if we can continue to get these cars better and better then we’ll have a good shot at this.”

New Hampshire Fast Facts

In honor of the Boston Celtics 17th NBA title, Kenseth’s No. 17 will carry a special congratulatory decal. The No. 17 crew will also don pit caps to celebrate the occasion.

On Wednesday, June 25, Kenseth along with his Roush Fenway Racing teammates and the Boston Red Sox, will celebrate Roush Fenway Day at Fenway Park.

Matt Kenseth will make his 17th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start at New Hampshire International Speedway in this weekend’s Lennox 300.

In 16 starts at NHIS, Kenseth has achieved 11 top-10 and five top-five finishes and has led a total of 88 laps.

Kenseth’s average start at NHIS is 19.1; however his average finish of 10.5 ranks among the best of active NSCS drivers.

With six consecutive top-10 finishes, Kenseth and crew have made their way back into the top 12 in point standings.