TOYOTA NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS)
Matt Kenseth — Notes & Quotes
Texas Motor Speedway – November 1, 2013
MATT KENSETH, No. 20 Home Depot ‘Let’s Do This’ Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How do you feel heading into the final three races of the year being tied for the points lead?
“Obviously I’m happy to be the leader even though it’s just really a tie and we have the tie breaker. I’d be more happy if we were the leader and it was three-and-a-half weeks from now, so we still have three races to go. Glad we’re still in it. I’m looking forward to the challenge here in the next three weeks. Hopefully we can go out here and run away — I know we’re capable of running up front and get a good result on Sunday and keep rolling.”
How have past races at Texas affected how you race Jimmie Johnson?
“There’s been a few races here where I’ve been leading right down to the end and then got beat, so I was disappointed. That was one of them (Texas in 2007). The other, Jeff Burton beat me on the last lap and there’s been a few of them. You always hate to be out front and get beat, similar to last week because I always feel like as a driver you beg your team to get you in that position and then when you can’t hold on, you feel like it’s on you. I do remember that day, he (Jimmie Johnson) was faster, ran us down. I think he was leading the points and we were pretty much out of the championship battle at the time realistically out of it. I guess mathematically we were in it. So, man I raced him as hard as I could figuring that, hoping that he would be a little bit cautious and I would be able to win the race and hang on, but I couldn’t. He did everything he could and beat us. I do remember that. It was a heck of a race. I hope to turn the tables some day and be able to beat him. He’s beat me on a couple of them late, beat me at Las Vegas one time, passed me on (turn) four on the last lap and we led all day and beat me on that one — it still stings. He actually has that picture hung up somewhere. I saw a TV special on him once and he had that picture in the background with him crossing the finish line ahead of me. I remember that, hopefully we can turn the tables and pull off a win on him toward the end someday.”
Does Texas Motor Speedway create good late race battles for the win?
“I don’t know. I think every circumstance is different. Every race plays out a little bit different. If you get like last year, Brad (Keselowski) got out front and he did a spectacular job as the only car on two tires and the guy on four tires was catching him. That lent itself to an exciting battle for the win, because you have the fastes t car behind the car who is backing up a little bit. I think any race track, any race — that’s how you create exciting finishes and exciting racing is by separating the field a little bit. The faster car catching the slower car is going to create passing and an exciting race. Just those circumstances had that where we were fading a little bit and he was fading at the end.”
Has your team made gains in recent races where you have a competitive edge over Jimmie Johnson this weekend?
“That’s the goal — the goal every week is to go out and figure out how to out run the other 42 drivers and figure out how to win the race. I really feel like when we’ve been at our best, I really feel like at all of the tracks except for the road courses, which we’ll put that to 100 percent on the driver, I feel like on our best days we’ve been competitive everywhere. We’ve won some mile-and-a-half races. New Hampshire was good for us, Martinsville was really good for us last week. I feel like when we’re at our best and we hit it right, I feel like we can run pretty good anywhere. You have to be able to prove that every week and every week things change and things are different. To answer your question, I hope so — that’s always the goal. They’re pretty good everywhere and certainly Jeff (Gordon) kind of creeped back in the picture last week and there’s still five cars that are fairly close and within striking distance if someone has a problem. Hopefully we can go race hard and get a result this week and keep it rolling.”
Will you continue to race Jimmie Johnson clean even though you’re both battling for the championship?
“I think you always race as hard as you can, especially when it comes down to a win, comes down to that last run of the day and comes down obviously to a championship. I think you always race as hard as you can, but at the same time you try to be as fair and clean as you can. I think you always throughout your career, you make mistakes and learn from them, all those kind of things. But, I think if you try to race people the way you want to be raced, it usually works out both ways. The goal is to always get your car running good where you can go pass and you can go out run other guys and not worry about that. People asked me a lot of questions at Martinsville about cars being roughed up and all that stuff and I was like, ‘Man, usually when you see Jimmie (Johnson), Jeff (Gordon), Denny (Hamlin) — those guys that win there all the time, their car sitting in victory lane hardly ever has a scratch on them. I think your goal is to have your car working better than the next guy so you can just pass them.”
How has your relationship with Jason Ratcliff developed this season since joining Joe Gibbs Racing?
“I knew of Jason (Ratcliff, crew chief), I didn’t really know a lot. I didn’t know him personally at all. I don’t think we ever, other than kind of seeing him or saying hi or something, I don’t think I ever knew him more than that. I talked to him for about five minutes when we made the announcement and then I went to dinner with him one night and other than that, until the day after Homestead, I didn’t really talk to him a lot or get to know him a lot. Certainly not talking about racing or race cars or anything like that. So, I think whenever you get to meet new people in general, and especially getting to work with him, too and building new relationships, you always learn a lot about each other. From what I knew about Jason and just the feeling I had about him and watching him work and how he goes about his business, I thought like we’d be a good fit. You never really know that until you get down into it and get working together. Certainly I’ve learned a lot about Jason. He’s obviously a huge factor, a huge key in our success this year. He’s the head coach, he’s the guy who — I guess not literally in that organization — he’s the guys that runs the team and takes care of the guys and communicates with me. He’s obviously a huge key to it. He’s a hard worker, he’s really, really smart and has a lot of common sense. He has a cool head. He commands a lot of respect and does a great job leading that team and we’ve become good friends. Obviously I really love working with him and love going to the race track with him.”
Did anything about this season surprise you?
“I didn’t really have — not really because I didn’t have any preconceived notions with any of it, with any of the group, with Jason (Ratcliff, crew chief), with the organization or anything. I honestly went in there with a totally open mind and just tried to get absorbed into the system a little bit and absorb it a little bit and learn everybody. I guess I expected to run good, I expected the team to run good and all that, but I guess if there’s a surprise, I probably didn’t expect him to be that good and for us to run as good as we have and for our communication stuff to be what it is. Really after our first test in December was probably the big eye-opening day for me. We went through that test and then we met up and talked for a couple hours about it and we have a lot of the same ideas in the way we would like to approach things and work on things.”
Is it an advantage or disadvantage to have a teammate in contention for the championship alongside you?
“Neither one as far as where you are in points. I always feel like the better your teammates run, of course you want to beat them, but the better they run and all that, the more it helps you. I think all three of us want to help each other and I think the better we all run, the better it is for the whole organization. We have more data to look through, we have more information to talk about, more things to ask him about and work together and all that. Certainly when all three of the cars run good, I think that’s good for all of us.”
When does the line blur in competition and you forget Kyle Busch is your teammate?
“When they drop the green. I think you always try to not put your teammate in a bad situation. You try to show him a little extra room on the track, that type of thing. Really, when they drop the green on Sunday, it’s one against 42. I think being a good teammate is way more about during the week, during test sessions, during practice, during debriefs, working together and doing all that stuff trying to help each other, if you find something try to help all three teams with it, information and that type of thing more so than it is on Sunday during the race. I don’t think there’s a ton of team racing that goes on even in plate races anymore when you try to work with your teammates and try to help if you can, but it’s a little different than it used to be. Certainly when you get out here on Sunday and they drop the green, you try to race against 42 cars.”
Do you know if some fans are rooting for you to win the championship because they’re rooting against Jimmie Johnson?
“I don’t know that I’ve really felt that. I think you’re always going to have people that are — hopefully you’ll always have people that are your fans and you’re always going to have people that aren’t your fan. There’s going to be people that wish you success and people that wish you don’t have success. I think that’s just normal, that’s kind of sports. That’s the way it goes. I think when someone wins as much as they win, you probably have people that like to see somebody beat them and then there’s other people that like that — they like to cheer for the dynasty and they like to see the same guy and team dominate and then there’s people who cheer for the underdog. I think that everybody likes something different. If everybody just liked the same driver and the same team and whatever, that wouldn’t be real exciting. I don’t know, I haven’t got a feeling like people walk up to you and wish bad things on somebody else or anything like that. I have a lot of people who walk up, that makes you feel good that say they’re pulling for you and they’re happy you’re doing good and that kind of thing. Then, you have others that are probably aren’t.”
Why was it important to you to talk with Drew Blickensderfer after the crew chief switch at Daytona a few years ago?
“I think throughout life and certainly throughout this sport, you create a lot of different relationships and you make friends and you work with people and sometimes it’s hard to separate that. It’s always hard when you become friends with somebody and work with somebody and you have some success together and you have some hardships together and for whatever reason you kind of break that up or whatever, you still want to maintain friends with those people. I’ve never been a good person to manage race teams or figuring out what I need there. I’m glad other people do that. In Drew’s (Blickensderfer) case, I have a lot of respect for Drew. He did a great job — we won the Daytona 500 together. We won the second race of the year together. There’s just — that particular case there was a lot of other factors that went into it as far as the team and organization at that time — it wasn’t just about him and I. Him and I got along fine and worked together fine and still have a lot of respect for him and thing that he’s a really smart guy and hard worker.”
What will it be like with Jeff Burton not having as much of a presence at the Cup level beginning next year?
“It’s different. You know I thought about that a little bit. When I went to Roush (Fenway Racing), Mark Martin and Jeff Burton were two of the biggest influences on my career and probably modeled a lot of my driving style and things on the track, things off the track off of Mark and Jeff. Those were the two guys, those were the two guys that I looked up to and the guys I asked for advice, I asked for help — all that stuff. As you see the calendar pages keep turning and things change and when some of those people aren’t around on a weekly basis anymore, it’s certainly different and then you know you’re getting closer to being in that next tier, so certainly that’s different. Jeff has had — I think he has a lot of good racing ahead of him and a heck of a career and he’s been a big influence on me, a big help to me along with Mark Martin and I don’t think Mark is going to be around on a full-time basis anymore next year. You never know about him, he might be, but he probably won’t be. That’s different, for sure.”
Do you know what buttons to push for Jimmie Johnson on the race track?
“I’m not really — it might change from his end if we’re still in it all the way to the end, but I’m just not really into all the head games. I’m not smart enough to be in the head games and insults and some of the stuff we’ve seen happen over the last few years. I’m just not — my brain is over capacity already with trying to figure out how to make my race car fast enough to be the best. They always say, if you want to be the man, you have to beat the man and he’s always definitely been the man. Really just trying to concentrate on that and trying to figure out how to make our car fast enough to go out and be able to compete with not only him, but the rest of the field each and every week. It’s a competitive group.
