Going into a new season, there’s always pressure there to get off to a good start. However, when you’re with a new team, the pressure is even twice as much. Matt Kenseth admits feeling that pressure when he made the move over to Joe Gibbs Racing. He wanted to be able to show Coach Joe Gibbs that he could live up to the expectations that he would win races and championships. After all, the team he is working with won two championships with Tony Stewart.
“Before this year I can’t remember the last time I’ve ever been nervous at all inside of a race car, and every week it gets a little bit better,” he said. “But you’re always a little bit nervous and you want to meet their expectations or exceed them, and you want to go do your job to the best of your ability.”
There was also the added pressure once he got to know the guys, especially crew chief Jason Ratcliffe, as he saw the potential.
“I felt like coming over here and getting to know Jason (Ratcliffe), and really everybody in the shop and the organization and everything, you know, just it’s a great feeling about the season,” he said. “We’re only three weeks in, but man, all three races we had a car, if everything would have went right, that we could have won, and it feels pretty awesome to have this win here.”
At Daytona International Speedway to open the season, he would finish 37th after blowing a motor while running in the top two. He would come back at Phoenix International Raceway a week later and finish seventh. With the win in the third race, Kenseth currently sits seventh in points.
Leading to those final laps at Las Vegas, though, you could sense the nerves and pressure with Kenseth in how he was yelling at spotter Chris Lambert to get the lap cars out of the way.
“He is so good,” Kenseth said of his new spotter. “He helped us win that race. He gave me the information that we needed, and it was really important. He understood what was important to me, but it was very important not to let Kasey get on the side of me. If he did, I was done, and he did a really good job of telling me where he was running.
Kenseth added that he was yelling like that because there was only 20 feet in the corner that he could run and still be fast as his car was getting tight being on the old tires.
While this moment does bring some relief for Kenseth, this is just the beginning of a long schedule with 33 more races, and the pressure doesn’t end. Now it’s all about continuing the momentum and possibly taking home the championship at the end of the year.
“You want to go to the next one and start thinking — we go on a plane to go home tonight, start thinking about Bristol and what we’re going to try to do there,” Kenseth commented. “That’s the great thing about the sport, it never stops, you only get to enjoy it for a couple days.”
In working at that, Kenseth says that he is “the lucky guy sitting in the seat” as he believes the people at Joe Gibbs Racing, including Ratcliffe, are set to build him cars that can win races all year.
“It is about the organization, it’s about the stuff that they give you, the engines TRD builds, the job Jason does not only with making the cars fast and adjustments, calling the races but also with his leadership, and getting the guys organized and cars prepared to win races,” Kenseth said. “I’m just the lucky guy sitting in the seat. Of course I’m going to give it everything I’ve got every race no matter where I’m running, but if he wouldn’t have put it out front and made all the adjustments and done that, I wouldn’t have been in position to win the race.”
His theory is backed up as he and his teammates Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin have ran well this year. The only problems they have ran into have been engine related, which TRD believes they’ve sorted out as a valve spring issue.
At the height of those issues and being one of the drivers to have a blown motor in Daytona, you’d think it’d play on the mind most of the new driver in the organization. However, Kenseth says he was probably feeling the best of anybody in the organization leaving Daytona with looking at how they performed.
“When you’re trying hard, you’re always trying to make the most power to make your car handle the best you can and do all that kind of stuff, every once in a while you’re going to have something happen,” he said. “And I didn’t mess it up. We were leading, and I would have been more disappointed leading Daytona if I were leading the last lap and finished eighth.”
The win for Kenseth on his 41st birthday topped off a solid week after he got to spend time with wife Katie and his two girls throughout the week leading up to the race.
“I got to Phoenix on Thursday or whatever, and then Katie and my two girls and her mom and dad came to Phoenix on Saturday and loaded up our Sequoia, and I felt like Clark Griswold,” he said. “And we drove up through Sedona and up through the Grand Canyon. There was a zoo down there by Flagstaff. We did all that for a few days and got here Wednesday. We’ve been gone for a fair amount of time, and we’re all ready to get home.”
From the Grand Canyon to the thunder bowl, Kenseth now gets set to tackle Bristol Motor Speedway.
Kenseth finishes first, bit deal. For the second week in a row pit road dictates the winner. The “great duel” was nothing, Kahne clearly faster, but cannot pass. The lead car has a tremendous advantage, and that’s just how it is going to be. K and K should have been passing each other back and forth for 20 laps, not the crap we had to suffer through.
The other reason Kahne couldn’t pass was he couldn’t get the run due to the lap cars and the fact Kenseth was taking his line, taking up that piece of real estate. Drivers have talked about the fact that right now, aero is a big deal. But perhaps with working on the cars, they can make it better.