Matt Kenseth re-signs with Roush Fenway Racing

Roush Fenway Racing announced today that it has re-signed 2003 Sprint Cup Champion Matt Kenseth to a multi-year contract. Kenseth has been with Roush Fenway since 1998 and has claimed 16 Sprint Cup Series wins and 24 Nationwide Series wins in addition to Roush Fenway’s first Sprint Cup championship.

“It’s been a great 11 years at Roush Fenway Racing,” said Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DEWALT Ford. “I appreciate everything Jack and DEWALT have done for me over the years. We’ve had a lot of success together including a championship and I’m really proud of that. I’m looking forward to the next few years and winning another championship with Roush Fenway.”

Roush Fenway Racing owner Jack Roush was elated with the news stating, “Matt Kenseth is a champion in every sense of the word and John Henry and I are proud to have him in our stable of drivers. Over the last 11 years Matt has been a leader in our organization and a voracious competitor on track, and to know that he will continue on in that role with Roush Fenway is gratifying.”

No. 17 DeWALT FORD FUSION RECAP:
KENSETH AND No. 17 DEWALT FORD TEAM CAP OFF 2008 SEASON WITH DISAPPOINTING 25TH-PLACE FINISH IN FORD 400
Promising day ends up short on gas; Upsetting finish leaves Kenseth 11th in Chase standings 

Race Summary Start: 3rd 27 to go: 1st Finish: 25th High: 1st Low: 25th Fastest Laps: 21 Laps in top 15: 239 Led: 73 Laps: 266/267 Status: Running Points: 93*5 Earnings: $119,341 Points Summary Races: 36 of 36 Points: 6184 Ranked: 11th

Matt Kenseth and the No. 17 DEWALT Ford Fusion team turned in a stellar performance in the 2008 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Posting a third-place qualifying effort and fast lap times during the weekend’s practice sessions, Kenseth and company looked to be on track and set to score their first victory of 2008. But although Kenseth kept the No. 17 up front for 73 laps, the No. 17 ran out of fuel with just two laps remaining in the race. Kenseth was forced to pit under green flag conditions and ultimately finished the race in 25th place, one lap down.

Pole winner David Reutimann led the 43-car field to the green flag on a cool and sunny Sunday afternoon in Homestead, Fla. Kenseth, in the No.17 DEWALT Ford, followed closely behind in third position and by the time the first lap was logged, Kenseth was scored as the race leader. However, as the run progressed, Kenseth reported that his DEWALT Ford was handling “tight in and loose off.” A green flag pit stop on lap 51 gave the No. 17 team the opportunity to make adjustments to the Ford. But with the bright Florida sunshine glaring in Kenseth’s eyes, he overshot his pit stall and valuable time was lost on pit road. By the time the entire field had cycled through green flag stops, Kenseth was scored in seventh place, running 14 seconds behind the leader.

Throughout two pit cycles, Kenseth continued to report tight handling problems. On lap 139, during a pit stop under caution, crew chief Chip Bolin made an aggressive call to insert a shim into the right front shock of the No. 17. After spending just over 16 seconds on pit road for the adjustment, Kenseth rejoined the race on lap 145 in 18th position. The adjustment worked because by lap 173, Kenseth was running third and on lap 186 Kenseth was the race leader.

A lap 198 caution would be the wrench thrown into Kenseth’s plan to stop just once more before the race’s conclusion: he was eight laps shy of making it to the finish on fuel. But since the “save fuel” strategy had successfully worked for teammate Carl Edwards several times this season, Bolin made the call to try to make it on fuel. He directed Kenseth to save fuel as he would not be pitting anymore.

From lap 203 to lap 256, Kenseth saved fuel while racing inside the top two. On lap 256, race leader Tony Stewart pitted for fuel and Kenseth was scored in first place and looked to be on his way to victory lane. But, just two laps shy of the finish, the DEWALT Ford sputtered and Kenseth was forced to pit for fuel.

Roush Fenway Racing’s Edwards took over the lead when Kenseth’s Ford ran out of gas on lap 265. Edwards maintained the lead and captured the win in the Ford 400, his ninth victory of 2008. Rounding out the top five were Kevin Harvick in second, fellow Roush Fenway Racing driver Jamie McMurray in third, and Jeff Gordon and Clint Bowyer in fourth and fifth respectively. Kenseth ultimately finished the race in 25th place, one lap down to the leader.

“We just decided to try and make it on fuel, so we just went slow,” Kenseth said after climbing out of his Ford Fusion. “We had a really fast car. We just messed up on our bump-stop gaps and couldn’t get it fixed until we got a caution in the middle of the race and then we had a good car, we just didn’t have enough gas.

“It just seems like it doesn’t matter which way we roll it. If we would have run hard, we wouldn’t have won either. It just doesn’t seem like we can do anything right. The car performed really well today. I’m happy about that, but we just can’t seem to get things to go our way. The 99 can’t do anything wrong and we can’t do anything right. I don’t understand how he can make power and still get that much better fuel mileage than us. I had such a big lead I was just riding around.

“I love racing and we’ve got to get this back to championship form. We’re used to winning and running up front and we haven’t been doing that, so we’ve got to figure out how to fix that. I’m ready to work on that and try to be back at the track and try to get doing better.”

The Chase for the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup concluded with Jimmie Johnson claiming the title for the third year in a row, defeating Roush Fenway’s Edwards by just 69 points. Kenseth and the No. 17 DEWALT Ford Fusion team wrap up the season 11th place in the Chase standings.

NEXT UP:
Budweiser Shootout • Daytona International Speedway • February 7, 2009

Matt Kenseth qualified 3rd for the season-ending race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

MATT KENSETH — Qualified 3rd — “That’s gonna end up in the top five or so and that’s better than I thought we were gonna be, to be honest with you. That lap didn’t feel very good and it had a lot of speed, so that’s a good thing. If we get the car to drive a little bit better and feel the way I want, we should have the speed there.”

HOW WAS YOUR RACE SETUP IN PRACTICE?

“Practice wasn’t very good, so we know we’ve got to work on it but we did have decent speed today, so that’s encouraging. If you’ve got the speed, that’s a lot easier to make them drive than if they’re driving good and slow.” 

MATT KENSETH POST-QUALIFYING PRESS CONFERENCE

HOW WAS YOUR RUN?

“I’m looking forward to starting up there. I haven’t been able to win yet this year and it’s kind of our last shot, so I had a really good qualifying lap. It didn’t feel very good and I didn’t think I did a great job, but we had a lot of speed in the car, so if we can get it to drive right, at least we know the speed is there.”

IS IT UNUSUAL TO WIN A RACE AND THEN HAVE THEM HUSTLE YOU OUT OF THE PRESS ROOM FOR THE CHAMPION LIKE LAST YEAR?

“It’s a cool race to win. It’s the last race of the year, so, yeah, the championship is going on and there’s a lot of other stuff going on. Obviously, if you don’t win the championship with the race it’s kind of split, but I was lucky enough to be on the other side of that one time when Bill won Rockingham, too. It’s cool to win anytime you can, especially the last race of the year because you can’t get beat the next week, so you’ve kind of got all winter to be a little bit happy about your win and enjoy it.”

THERE ARE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS OUT THERE WHO WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S KEEPING YOU FROM TAKING OUT JIMMIE JOHNSON ON SUNDAY?

“Common sense.”

WHAT MAKES ROUSH FENWAY SO GOOD HERE?

“It seems like their stuff has always been pretty good on the mile-and-a-halfs and tracks this size, but I think we have tracks that maybe suit each particular driver or team maybe a little bit better, but, really, if you look at the organization as a whole, I don’t know if they have a lot of weak points. Carl has run great everywhere this year. Greg has run really good at the flat one-mile tracks. Jamie runs real good at Martinsville and some of those tracks. I personally have some tracks that I think I’m real weak at in the 17, but, as a group, it seems like somebody is able to get it right or get it pretty close every week.”

 — Ford Racing

Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWALT Ford Fusion, is the defending winner of the Ford 400. He held a Q&A session after Friday’s practice to discuss his hopes for a repeat and ending the season on a high note.

DO YOU HAVE ANY SORT OF ADVANTAGE HERE WITH YOUR PREVIOUS SUCCESS?

“Not really. Nobody has been here with this car, except for a few people doing the tire test, so I don’t think it really gives us an advantage, but you always look forward to coming to Ford Championship Weekend. We don’t want to be shutout for the year, but so far we are. Hopefully, we can come down here and try to get a win.”

WHAT ARE YOUR IMPRESSIONS AFTER PRACTICE?

“The track is kind of unique, it’s all kind of by itself, but the car drives similar to other tracks of this size and it’s pretty much what we expected, so we have another day of practice to try and get it driving a little better.”

WHEN YOU’VE HAD SUCCESS AT A TRACK ARE YOU MORE EXCITED ABOUT COMING BACK?

“Yeah, I like the track so any track you enjoy or run good at, you always enjoy coming back to it. We go try to win all the time. We didn’t try any harder last year or do anything different. We’re not trying any harder or doing anything different here, we’re just gonna work as hard as we can at it and hope that we can get a win.”

DOES THIS CHASE BATTLE MAKE YOU RACE ANY DIFFERENTLY?

“It doesn’t affect it at all. We go out and race as hard as we can every week to try to get wins and try to finish as high as we can, so it really doesn’t change it.”

DOES THIS RACE GET LOST IN THE SHUFFLE OF THE TITLE BATTLE?

“I don’t think so. I think everybody thinks of it as Ford Championship Weekend. There are three championships that are gonna get decided the next three days. Even though ours is pretty much locked up, it’s not 100 percent sure, so I think that you pay attention to the whole thing. You pay attention to the points race and you pay attention to who is winning and running good.”

YOU WERE THE LAST DRIVER TO WIN IN THE OLD FORMAT. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE CHANGES MADE SINCE?

“That was a great year for us, but since then — no matter what format they’ve implemented, we haven’t been good enough to win the championship, so we’ve just got to keep working on it. The chase is different, but yet it’s not. You need to go out and out-perform your competition every week. That’s really what it’s all about each and every week, and really for the whole season as well, so it’s really not that much different. Everybody gets re-racked and it basically goes back to zero, but you still have to perform better than everyone else for those 10 weeks.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON NO TESTING TO START NEXT YEAR?

“I think the testing thing will be alright. I think either way it might even make the racing better. There are some tracks that we can test until we’re blue in the face — like Charlotte this year — and until the track ages and they can bring us a little softer tire or make an aero change in the body or something, we’re not really gonna be able to figure it any better or pass any better. One thing that I don’t know if anybody has thought of is that without testing it might separate the field a little bit and make us able to pass a little bit more — make the time differential a little bit more between the cars — because when we test we all run so close to the same speed that it makes it really hard to pass.”

KEVIN HARVICK SAID THEY’VE MADE A LOT OF GAINS AWAY FROM THE TRACK. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT?

“Yeah, the bodies are locked in and the splitter height is locked in and there’s not a lot we can do to these cars anyway, so I think through some of the simulation stuff and other things that we do that we can probably learn as much as we can going to the track and testing. Unless they open the rules back up or they make an aero change to the body or they make a rules change, I don’t know that how much going to these tracks as many times as they originally talked about was really gonna help us.”

DO YOU THING THE DRIVERS ARE HAPPY ABOUT NOT HAVING TO TEST FOR THREE DAYS AT DAYTONA IN JANUARY?

“Yes and no. I always enjoy going down to Daytona and testing and getting ready to kick off the year, but, again, with this car and the rules that they have, there’s really not a lot we can do. We’ve been there twice with this car this year and they’re not changing any rules as far as I know, so, really, you’re just kind of going through the motions in a way. You go out and draft a little bit, but for as much practice as you have at Speedweeks and the Shootout and all the stuff that goes on, really that’s enough. In my opinion, unless they make rules changes, there’s really not much we can do to these cars anyways, so you just refine the stuff the best you can at the shop and bring your best stuff there and go from there.”

 — Ford Racing

Homestead-Miami Speedway • Homestead, Fla.
Ford 400 • Sunday, November 16 • 3 pm/e ABC

Sprint Cup Chassis — #17 DeWALT Ford Fusion
• RK-616 — Brand new.

   
Matt Kenseth’s Cup performance summary at Homestead:

Date	S	F	Laps	Led	Reason
11/18/07	4	1	267/267	214	Running
11/19/06	19	6	268/268	0	Running
11/20/05	17	3	267/267	0	Running
11/21/04	30	19	271/271	0	Running
11/16/03	37	43	28/267	0	Engine
11/16/02	13	40	223/267	0	Engine
11/11/01	21	27	266/267	0	Running
11/12/00	38	21	264/267	0	Running

    
Matt Kenseth Cup totals at Homestead:

Races	Wins	Top 5s	Top 10s	Laps Led	Poles
8	1	2	3	214	0

 
Matt Kenseth on racing at Homestead:

“Homestead is pretty cool. We were actually working on our Homestead stuff a few weeks ago and were trying to compare it to another track and you really can’t. It’s really unique with the way it’s built right now and the way the banking is and the elevation changes and all that stuff, so it’s pretty cool. They did a great job and spent the money and did the research and they weren’t scared to go out on a limb and build it like no other track. I think the racing is really exciting there. There are a lot of different lanes you can look for. It’s a lot of fun. It's the only track we have that's that big that is a true oval without the dogleg, and the backstretch being higher than the frontstretch, it makes all four corners a lot different, so it's a fun track I think the racing there is as good as anywhere now. I think all the drivers and teams and the fans, everybody loves going down there and it's a great event to have at the end of the year and to crown all the champions, so it's really unique.

“As the season comes to end, you can kind of sit back and reflect a little bit about things. And, I think with some of the changes with this car and changing our group around a little bit, I think it’s been a fairly successful season. We made the Chase, which, in turn, gave us a chance to at least run for a championship, so there’s that aspect of it. But there’s just one race left and we haven’t been to Victory Lane yet, so that’s very disappointing. We’re out of the championship hunt, which is very disappointing, but there are certain things that happen that are out of your control, and things that happen that are in your control you try to look at and try to fix and try to do better the next time, and just keep trying to improve. We’re always trying to improve and trying to get our cars better. We're always trying stuff, but we're not gonna try stuff that's gonna have a chance at dropping us out of races and taking us out of contention to win a race, or losing more points. We still want to finish as high as we possibly can in the points. We certainly want to get back to Victory Lane real bad and we're out there just trying to bring our best stuff and do the best we can.”

Sprint Cup Crew Chief Chip Bolin on racing at Homestead:

“These guys have done one heck of a job the past four weeks, really throughout the whole Chase. Their performance has improved all year and especially during the Chase, we were just unfortunate to have some things go bad for us early on in the Chase, otherwise we’d be pretty close to contending for the championship. I’m proud of how this team stayed the course when so much went wrong, and we’ve been able to bounce back nicely because of their hard work and great attitude.”

Homestead Fast Facts

Matt Kenseth will make his ninth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start at Homestead-Miami Speedway (HMS) this weekend in the Ford 400.

For the record… In eight starts at HMS, Kenseth has posted one win, two top-five and three top-10 finishes. Kenseth has completed 1854 of 2141 (86.6%) laps attempted at HMS.

Kenseth has led a total of 214 laps at Homestead, all of which he led last year en route to victory in the Ford 400. The win was Kenseth’s first at HMS and marked the final time the “old” cars were ever raced.

Rewind PHOENIX… After enjoying three consecutive top-10 finishes, Matt Kenseth and the No. 17 DEWALT Ford Fusion team were looking forward to the race at Phoenix International Raceway. However, Kenseth and crew would be none-too excited for what Sunday’s O’Reilly Checker’s Auto Parts 500 would have in store for them. After relatively successful practice sessions, Kenseth and the No. 17 team were hopeful heading into Sunday’s 312-lap event, although a less than stellar 34th-place starting position would have Kenseth starting near the rear of the pack. During Sunday’s second-to-last NASCAR Sprint Cup race, the No. 17 team came face-to-face with trouble in the form of just about anything from handling issues, to a flat tire, and even a late-race accident. After spending much of the race a lap down to the leader, Kenseth earned the Lucky Dog Award on lap 284 and by day’s end; the No. 17 DEWALT team had pulled off a 15th-place finish.

In the LOOP… According to NASCAR’s Loop Data acquired over the past three Ford 400’s, Kenseth ranks first in average finish (3.3), laps led (214), and points obtained (510). He has a driver rating of 115.6, second best.

The Chase is on… Heading into the Ford 400, Kenseth remains in eighth place in the Chase standings, 470 points behind the leader, Jimmie Johnson.

On the track… The No. 17 DEWALT team will be unloading RK-616 this weekend at Homestead. This is a brand new Ford Fusion.