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[/media-credit]Jack Roush said last week that he was “surprised” that Matt Kenseth would not be returning to Roush Fenway Racing in 2013, but was he really? Roush is not a dumb guy and if you add all of the known information together that simply doesn’t add up. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was bound to move up to the Sprint Cup Series really soon. Do you remember Brad Keselowski? Keselowski was bound to be the next big thing at Hendrick Motorsports, but they simply didn’t have the space for him. It also didn’t help that NASCAR limited the teams to having just four cars per race team along with the economy that has forced Roush to make some serious cuts to his organization. This is primarily because he operates in both series which are both struggling attendance wise this season.
Brad Keselowski felt that he was deserving of a Sprint Cup ride following a couple of successful Nationwide stints for Jr. Motorsports and rightfully so, but there is always that risk of moving up too early. Keselowski struggled in his first season with Penske Racing. He managed to get just two Top 10’s and snagged 1 pole at the Chase race at Loudon, but it was far from what he had expected. Will the same fate fall on Stenhouse? If it indeed does, can he recover? Keselowski has proven now here in 2012 that he has put that year behind him and now he even leads the Cup Series in wins this season with 3.
Roush definitely knew prior to the announcement that Kenseth would not be returning in 2013. Just think about it. How was Kenseth acting the week prior when asked about his contract status? Kenseth was bitter and he really didn’t want to talk about it. Kenseth knew eventually that it was going to come out and he decided to do it during the middle of the season. Now, was that a smart idea? I honestly would have waited till the end of the season to avoid any morale issues within his team, but I think everyone who has been involved in NASCAR for a while had seen this coming.
Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle both signed contract extensions with Roush Fenway Racing very recently, which left Kenseth the odd man out. David Ragan was the odd man out at Roush at the end of 2011 because Roush felt that he had given Ragan too many chances and he didn’t capitalize on them. Ragan fell to the superiority factor of big race teams. Kenseth is leaving because he is simply the older man and Roush is open to more youth taking control. Ricky Stenhouse will be a great asset to the Roush team and we wish Kenseth the best as he takes the 17 number with him to another race team, most likely Joe Gibbs Racing.
JJ…what are you talking about?
Ryan…do you think Kenseth might have done this early perhaps in order to help morale? Otherwise, they would have this shroud of ambiguity hanging over them for the rest of the season. Methinks the best course is to get the ambiguity out of the way early.
Then again, there’s still ambiguity with where he’s going. :-P
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Has it been confirmed that Kenseth will take the #17 with him? It makes sense, Darrell Waltrip wants him to, and Stenhouse arguably fits better with the #6, but I didn’t see any confirmation of that actually happening.
Kenseth is a chump for doing what he did to JR. Any decent person would have given his owner of 15 years the decency of talks.
I can’t imagine wanting to be a part of a team with HD as the sponsor. HD sponsors too many “parades” which tells a person what kind of morals they have. I’m surprised Gibbs wants to be a part of them also.