TOYOTA NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS)
Matt Kenseth — Notes & Quotes
Sonoma Raceway – June 21, 2013
MATT KENSETH, No. 20 Home Depot Husky Tools Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How do you feel about this weekend?
“Well, it’s always a challenging weekend, but I am looking forward to it. We only get a shot at this once a year. Like you touched on, it hasn’t been my best track by any means. Different car — this car has been pretty good for us everywhere we’ve been. We’ve been fairly competitive everywhere. So, looking forward to getting out there today. Seeing what it drives like. I kind of like the schedule — just working on the race today and go qualify tomorrow and get ready for Sunday.”
What do you think of the new road course qualifying rules?
“I don’t know. What is it? (pause) I think it will be all right. I think it’s fun today to just work on race trim the whole day honestly, and then tomorrow you just have a little short session. I was only half-joking. I don’t know the exact rules. I know they’re doing it different. I think we have a couple laps with a group out there or whatever. It’s fine. There’s always a lot of pressure when you got to go out and do one lap and you have so many corners — it’s kind of easy to mess up. So, I think it will be fun.”
Why haven’t you had much success on the road courses?
“I don’t know exactly why it is. I’ve always really enjoyed Watkins Glen. This track has been a little bit more of a struggle. They’re really, really different. Everybody groups road courses together — it’s kind of like grouping ovals together. These two tracks, in my opinion, couldn’t be any different. This one’s always been very challenging for me. It’s really narrow. It’s really slick. It’s just been a bad challenge. We only go to two road courses so they kind of group them all together. I don’t know. Just felt like I have been very good at it. So, hopefully I’ll be better at it this week.”
Do you work to get better on road courses?
“Yeah. You are always working to get better everywhere. It’s hard to really work at it besides to study and think about it and look over information and watch races and do things like that with a limited amount of testing. We aren’t going to burn a test up to come all the way out here. So, when you only get to do it twice a year it’s hard to really work at it a whole lot, but certainly I work at it as hard as I can.”
Is there any concern about horsepower for this race?
“I don’t think horsepower means a whole lot when you come here. Maybe a little bit for qualifying. Of all the tracks on the circuit, this is probably the one you need the least amount of horsepower. It’s real slick. There’s a lot of places typically after five or six laps you can hardly even floor it. This is not a horsepower track at all. You don’t worry about it, but you want reliability like you do anywhere else. There’s a lot of higher RPM’s here and a lot of shifting and easy to make a mistake — that type of thing. This is definitely not a horsepower track at all.”
Have you tested at any road courses, such as Virginia International Raceway (VIR)?
“We did. Typically, every year we go somewhere and test road course cars. But, you know, going to VIR and testing is fine, but it’s kind of like going to Caraway (Speedway) or something and testing for Richmond. It’s just there is no replica of this track — unless you come out here and test. Again, that’s grouping all the road course stuff together. And I know there’s similarities in style and that type of thing. To me it’s a lot different than here. I don’t usually take away a lot from there that I think will help me here. But, it was good to go get a day of road course testing in and kind of get back in the swing of things.”
Are there still road course ‘ringers’?
“Well, I think back in the day it seemed like there was more than today. I think when the rules changed, when the COT came along I think it equaled up a lot — you know everybody a lot. A lot of the rules changes — gear ratios, and ring gears and all that stuff — it has everybody so much closer together it doesn’t seem like they come in and really dominate any more. I certainly think they have a chance. I don’t know who the list of all of them are anymore, but I know in the day it seemed like there’s three or four ‘regulars’ that were really good at road racing and then there was the rest of them that were just kind of average, and then there was the rest of them — and I fell in that group — that were just terrible. Ron Fellows and some of those guys could come in and run really well, and Boris (Said) — and seem like they have a shot. I don’t know if they will this time or not really until after the race Sunday, honestly, or see how they’re running. But, I certainly think the cars are a lot more equal and everybody’s probably a little better at it than they used to be.”
MATT KENSETH, No. 20 Home Depot Husky Tools Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing (continued)
Do you have more optimism this weekend?
“Heck yeah. Can’t you just see the optimism oozing out of me sitting here? We haven’t even been on the track yet. Our cars have been pretty fast everywhere. I’m more optimistic today than I’ve ever been on a Friday coming to Sonoma. You don’t know what the day holds or the rest of the weekend holds, but I feel alright about it.”
Are you pretty pleased with how things have turned out with your decision to join Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR)?
“Yeah. I mean I feel like we’re early — or still early — in what I hope will be a long time spent at JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) and I hope we’ll do a lot more things than we did. But, certainly the year — there’s been ups and downs. There’s been things that have happened, but certainly I think we’ve had more success than a lot of us maybe would have thought we would to get going. I feel like the way everything played out — even last year ending the year pretty strong. Feel like everybody really fulfilled their commitments and worked hard to end that deal successfully. That all ended good and then certainly this has started really well. I feel really good about the early part of our season and where we’re at and how we’ve been performing. Hopefully we can keep that up. It’s been an awesome start. So, I hope we can keep that up through the end of the year when it really counts.”
