MATT KENSETH, No. 20 Dollar General Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How does it feel to come to Richmond after a win?
“Yeah, it was good to get that win, obviously. It’s been a long time, so that was I think great for everybody at JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) and everybody on our team. It’s always obviously boosts confidence and moral. As far as outlook for this weekend or approach, I don’t feel like anything changes at all as far as our approach. Outlook, I’m not sure. This is one of those tracks that for me is very, very hard to predict. Even after practice is over and qualifying is over, it’s still hard for me to predict. It seems like the track changes so much from practice here in the sun in the middle of the day to the race once you get going at night. It’s a tough one really until you get into the race.”
What is the strangest thing you have seen in the Talladega infield?
“I’ve got to be honest with you and you’re probably not going to believe me, but I’ve never been through the Talladega infield besides the motorhome park. It would just be all the strange people that are in the motorhome park where I’m parked I would guess. I must be the only one who hasn’t been through there, but I haven’t actually during the night.”
Does the possibility of wet conditions change your preparation for a race?
“That’s a great question and it doesn’t really change mine – it would probably be a good question for Jason (Ratcliff, crew chief) to think about the track – but even if it does rain and I know there’s a possibility I guess it would be a day race which might change it a little bit. It might bring it more back to your notes for today than what your typical adjustments are for night time. Like I said, for me I don’t have a really good handle or feel on how this track changes from day to night during a race and all that, so Jason probably does a lot better than me and probably Denny (Hamlin), but I really don’t. For me, it’s always kind of a guess. I’m not sure what I’m going to get when the race starts. Whenever I’m pretty confident I know what the track is going to do, it seems like my car goes the other way. Just kind of leave that up to Jason and the guys to figure out.”
How do you pass the time during rain delays?
“It depends. Probably not a lot different than everybody else – just kind of hang out and wait for it to stop raining and get dried up. Just depends – sit around and eat, look at the TV. Yeah, same thing pretty much.”
Do you think your mile-and-a-half program is improving?
“Well, I hope so. I mean, before Texas I thought it improved quite a bit from last year. I can’t really recall how we ran at Vegas, but I thought Atlanta we ran better, had some decent speed. I thought it was improving. California (Auto Club Speedway) was really, really good – I know that’s not a mile-and-a-half, but it’s a big ‘ole, wore out, fast track. I thought we all ran really well there, qualified well and ran well and had ourselves in position. I feel like we’re gaining. We’ve got a lot new stuff coming here pretty soon that we think will be better – we don’t really know without testing until we get to the track and race it a few times. We hope it’s better. I felt like it’s getting better.”
How long do grudges last in NASCAR?
“I think every situation is probably a little bit different. Every driver gets a little bit different – probably how they react to the situation or how long you hold on to certain things. For me, I think if you’re concentrating and focusing on a disagreement you had with somebody and what’s going to happen in the future and all that kind of things, obviously you don’t have 100 percent focus on your job and trying to figure out how to run good and do those kinds of things. I really don’t spend any time really thinking about it. You go out and try to race people as hard as you can, but as fair as you can at the same time and you always hope to get that same treatment and go from there.”
Does your mindset change now that you have won in 2015?
“I’ve got to be honest, mine really doesn’t and I hope the team’s doesn’t either really to be honest with you. I think that every week you show up with the idea of trying to qualify the best you can and trying to win the race. If you can’t win, you want to finish second. If you can’t finish second, you want to finish third. You always want to do the best you can. I’ve never been to the race track and not wanted to win to do my best or not wanted to finish the best I could. I just don’t feel like any of that changes. I know that where you are in the point standings doesn’t have a big effect to where the rack you up when September comes along, but, man, we’re only in April and we want to race hard every week and try to get the best results we can every week for our team and our sponsors and everybody involved.”
How helpful is Denny Hamlin when coming to Richmond?
“Absolutely, Denny (Hamlin) is a resource for us everywhere we go. I think he’s kind of underrated for people that don’t actually get to work with him, so he’s helped me a great deal since I joined JGR. I think he makes all of us better. He’s a great teammate and I think he’s got a good feel for every race track or a lot of race tracks, but he’s certainly got an extra good feel and approach and things he does at the short tracks.”
What is Steve Byrnes legacy?
“It’s hard for me to say what somebody’s legacy is and all that kind of stuff – that’s pretty deep for me – but Steve (Byrnes) was very well respected. I think he was really good at his job. He was always friendly and fun to see, so definitely will miss seeing him at the race track and I obviously feel bad for his family and everything they’re going through.”
How will the tire fall off affect the way you race this weekend?
“I don’t know if there’s anything I do different necessarily to plan for that. This is one of those places that you have to be decent on a short run because you can make some passes on restarts and that type of thing. The inside is always such a big advantage, but on a long run here if you do have tire fall off like last Spring – I think there was a lot of fall off – you can certainly make a lot of moves at the end of the run if you’re handling better. I know the trend has been lately to get all these cautions late and everything, but there is always the possibility of getting some longer runs here. You want to be good at the end of the run as well. In my opinion, that’s fun kind of racing when you have a lot of tire fall off. You just don’t have that at very many tracks anymore. It’s more about staying in front and the tires don’t back up very much with all the downforce we have in the tires. If there is a lot of tire fall off, I think that’s something all the drivers will welcome and look forward to. It’s a lot more fun.”
What was your impression of how Erik Jones did subbing for Denny Hamlin at Bristol?
“I don’t know if he was wishing he had his phone off or not. I don’t really know. I didn’t ask him. That was a very unique circumstance – one that I’ve never quite been in. Erik (Jones) has been doing an awesome job obviously in the XFINITY car and truck and he’s obviously got a lot of talent. I think it’s hard to judge him either way in what he did in Bristol in Denny’s (Hamlin) car. Man, that’s a tough environment – not one lap of practice and even though he ran the race before, the Cup race is just so different to jump in there and go that fast and be surrounded by all those cars and everything. It’s just a lot different. I thought he probably – you’ll have to ask him – but I feel like he learned a lot and it’s probably an experience he’ll be able to think about and learn from.”
How much momentum does the Bristol win give you?
“It’s hard to say. With the momentum, there’s been times I’ve been very fortunate through my career to obviously experience the highs and the lows, but I feel like there’s times where things go right, even when they’re going wrong, they end up right and things work out for you. Then there’s times that no matter how good you run or what position you put in or how good you do, things just don’t work out. They just don’t. You’ll get a caution at the wrong time or you’ll get caught up in somebody’s wreck or break a part or what have you. I feel like we’ve had some of those times the last year. We’ve had ourselves in position to win a couple races. Here in the spring, I think we led through the first couple green-white-checkers or short runs, whatever it was and just kept getting cautions and couldn’t get it done on the last restart. Without the cautions, we would have won. There’s just times you go through both sides of it and I hope we’re on the other side and have everything go right for a while. I hope we can continue to run better and put ourselves in position to win and hopefully we’ll have circumstances go our way for a while – you always hope for that.”
What was it like to see J.D. Gibbs after your Bristol win?
“It was good. I got to see him – Tuesday night we had a sponsor summit, so we had all our sponsors and everybody at the Greenbrier, which was cool. President Bush came and spoke to our group and hung out with us for a long time. It was a really, really neat dinner. I enjoyed hanging out with everybody. I got some cool insight on some different things, so that was enjoyable.”
Do you enjoy running short track races back-to-back?
“I like all the tracks we go to. I like short track racing. To me it doesn’t matter necessarily where they fit in the schedule. Every week you go somewhere different. You have to go adapt to that. It’s probably a good question for the team – I don’t know if it makes it easy or harder to prepare the cars and have them ready for two back-to-back short tracks even though they are very different tracks. To me, it doesn’t really matter much how the schedule falls and where we are except for the Daytona 500 and having Darlington over Labor Day – I think putting Darlington back to Labor Day was an awesome move by NASCAR. It’s cool having some of the traditional races – the 600 over Memorial Day – but other than that it doesn’t matter to me. I’m just happy to be here to race, when it is doesn’t matter that much to me.”
