Matt Kenseth enters Race One of the 2011 Chase for the Sprint Cup with two victories. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Even after all these years, Matt Kenseth is still sneaky good.
He is NASCAR’s Quiet Man, a sort of stealth superhero who isn’t there until you look around with 20 laps to go and – bam! – he’s on your bumper.
He’s from the David Pearson school of racing.
It doesn’t seem like Kenseth has had an outstanding season, but take a look at the Chase seeds and there he is – a stout fourth entering Sunday’s playoff opener at Chicagoland Speedway.
Kenseth goes about his business with little flair. He reports for work, gets the job done and suddenly beats you. A Daytona Beach, Fla. newspaper columnist once famously suggested that Kenseth would “paint the town plaid” after a race win.
Kenseth good-naturedly brushes off the talk. He makes most of his responses with his cars.
And once again, he sits in position to challenge for the championship.
“The start of it all is having fast race cars,” Kenseth said. “If we can show up at the race track and our cars can be fast when we get them on the race track, that’s the start. If you don't have that, you're not going to have a chance.
“I don't care how good your pit stops are, I don't care how smart you are, what kind of good moves you make, how you call the race. If your car is slow, you're not going to have a good day unless it's a fluke and you're the one that can make it on fuel and you're shutting engines off and running half throttle and don't have to pit an extra time. But other than that, you just don't have a chance.”
Veteran crew chief Jimmy Fennig has given Kenseth those fast cars most of the season, and there is no reason he shouldn’t be considered a threat for a second championship over the coming 10 weeks.
Kenseth hasn’t been a part of the back-and-forth jabbering and on-track jousting that has colored the weeks leading to the Chase, and he isn’t too sad about that.
“I think that you have to have fast race cars, and then just do the best you can and not worry about that stuff,” he said. “I don't think there's any kind of advantage, but I will tell you, it's nice to not be in any of that stuff.
“I love watching it. It's great, great entertainment, seeing what all’s going on. Everybody likes conflict, I guess, to a point. Most people don't like to be a part of it, but it's fun to watch. … Certainly you never know what's going to happen down the stretch, but I like not being involved in it when I can be.”
Kenseth enters Race One of the Chase with two victories, some other good finishes and a smattering of difficult races. He expects more.
“That's not good enough to win a championship,” he said. “Most tracks I felt like our performance was good enough to be a contender. Our finishes weren't, but I thought our performance was pretty good. We qualified good, maybe led a few laps here and there, ran toward the front but just didn't finish the races off. We didn't get the finishes where we ran.
“You've got to do better than that. I think one thing our team used to be really, really good at it – it seems like we always overachieve. Part of that is because we didn't qualify well, but it seemed like where we ran the last lap of the race was generally the highest we ran. That's always important when you're having a bad day and you've got a 16th-place car and you figure out how to finish 11th with it or you have one of the dominant cars you need to figure out how to win with it.
“I think those results aren't good enough to win a championship, but I feel like our performance in some of those races and how fast our cars were and the speed in our cars and the pit stops and stuff, I feel like that's good enough. I feel like we have everything, but we've got to get the finishes and we've got to do the right things every week.”
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 29 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
