What, you thought he was retired? Nah. Matt Kenseth is coming home to race again. From Dave Kallman at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel March 15, 2109 As the days wound down on his NASCAR career last fall and Matt Kenseth cared less and less whether he climbed back into a premier-level stock car, he kept his mind open to doing “some things that would be fun to do.”
“Run some late-model stuff. Go up to Slinger,” he told the Journal Sentinel in October. “Go do some things like that.”
And, sure enough, that thought evolved into a full-fledged plan for the 2003 NASCAR champion and two-time Daytona 500 winner from Cambridge, Wisconsin. He’s not done racing.
Kenseth, 47, will return to Slinger Speedway in his home state to compete in the Slinger Nationals – the short-track special he has won seven times – on July 9, the track announced via Facebook.
"I can't think of a better place for me to get back in a race car than Slinger,” Kenseth said in the announcement. “We've had a lot of success there, a lot of memorable moments, and I'm looking forward to going back.
“The Nationals have always been one of the major events in all of short-track racing. Certainly it was the one you wanted to win growing up in Wisconsin. Throughout the years, a lot of big names in NASCAR have raced in the Nationals. That's a testament to how big of a race this has been for some time.”
The list of winners over the event’s 37 years includes NASCAR stars Alan Kulwicki (1981), Mark Martin (1984) and Kyle Busch (2011), national-level short-track standouts Dick Trickle (four times), Joe Shear (four times), Rich Bickle (four times), Bubba Pollard (2017) and Ty Majeski (2018).