TOYOTA NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS)
Matt Kenseth – Notes & Quotes
Kansas Speedway – October 16, 2015
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Matt Kenseth was made available to the media at Kansas Speedway:
MATT KENSETH, No. 20 Dollar General Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
How do you approach this weekend’s race at Kansas?
“For me it’s really no different, we show up and try to do the best we can every week. Same this week, obviously a win moves you on, but I don’t feel like it’s a must win. It would make it easier if we could win. Just try to do the best we can today to qualify as good as we can and hopefully start up front and get working on the race tomorrow and hopefully be up front Sunday.”
What do you think of the new Chase format?
“I can hardly remember last week much less last year. Certainly I think the Chase last year had a lot of drama in a lot of different ways. Besides us, some of the conflicts that driver’s had, you had a couple different rounds at least that came down to a guy having to win that last race and doing it to get to the next round. I think with Brad (Keselowski) at Talladega and Kevin (Harvick) at Phoenix, Kevin again at Dover this year. I think that stuff certainly creates more interest, more things to watch, more drama – however you want to look at it for sure.”
Have you watched a replay from last week’s incident with Ryan Newman?
“I didn’t watch it yet to be honest with you, I still haven’t seen it. It was a busy week, we were in Phoenix all week testing and I just didn’t watch it to be honest with you. Ryan (Newman) and I have always gotten along really well, we’ve always raced each other really well. Since we wrecked, I most likely wasn’t clear so I’m sure at the end of the day it was my fault. I still haven’t watched it or seen it, but neither Ryan or I, either one of us wanted to be in that position, it hurt both of us. Can’t really do anything about last week. Just try to be smarter and if there’s a problem, try to fix it with that driver and move on.”
Will you race differently around Ryan Newman the rest of the Chase?
“I think it’s the same really, I really do and I know I say that and a lot of people don’t believe it, but the rewards are greater if you win obviously. I don’t know if the penalty is worse or not from wrecking last week, no matter what the Chase format is, we had a lot of things that got us to where we were there. We just had a lot of things go wrong between losing track position, sliding through my pit stall and getting wrecked and then hitting that oil and wrecking again and then blowing a tire and wrecking again. We just had a lot of things go wrong, but that was last week and you just move on. We had a really fast Dollar General Camry, led some laps, we were on the pole and we feel like we should have that speed here hopefully so we’re just going to work hard to hopefully get our car running like that again and hopefully be in that position and be able to capitalize on that.”
How important is it to get track testing time for the Chase like you had at Phoenix this week?
“I think it’s always good to get some track time. It’s funny, we were talking about it the other day, they made a testing rule for this year and I think we tested more this year than we’ve ever tested. I don’t think it’s been a big cost savings for anybody. A three-day test is a long time and it was 100 degrees out for three days. I don’t know how much you’re going to learn necessarily for November, but still don’t get a lot of testing or a lot of track time so anytime you can get that you take advantage of it.”
How concerned are you about having a bad race in this format and coming back from that situation?
“I don’t know, it’s a very different format. You look at Jimmie (Johnson) with the problem he had and he’s out, if it was a 10-race deal he might not be out. You can usually have a mulligan and in this format depending on what your competition does, you can’t. Two races, if it happened to us in one race, it can happen to anybody in this race or the next race. I really haven’t thought about it a lot, I got through last weekend and went through and worked on closing Charlotte down on Monday and kind of went through all our notes on what went wrong and what went right, what we did good and what we need to do better, just all the normal stuff and close the book on that and worked on Phoenix this week and at the same time worked on Kansas to get ready for this.”
How did you go through the planning process and taking the leap of faith to change teams?
“I think it depends on a lot of different things, like if you’re the one making the change or your being forced to make a change and have to pick where you’re going or that’s all that is left so you have to take it. I think there’s so many different circumstances there, and thinking about myself and Kevin (Harvick) for different reasons felt like it was time to do something else and had the opportunity we wanted come up and to be able to do that with the personnel you wanted and opportunity you wanted and all that stuff. Did I expect to run as well as we did or have so far? I don’t know it would be hard to expect that, 2013 was pretty spectacular, this year has really been overall also no matter what happens. Certainly that’s what you hope for and if you didn’t think you could do better and be in a better situation and more competitive, successful, happier – all those things you probably wouldn’t do it. In Joey’s (Logano) case, he can probably speak to that, but for him it worked out great too, so it’s one of those situations where it worked out really good for me and actually worked out for him too getting a fresh start and getting people around that really believed in him. Obviously it’s been great for his confidence, his performance and since he’s been there, he’s been one of the guys to beat.”
Why would someone want to switch teams?
“Everybody’s situation is different, and I can only speak to mine. I don’t think it was that I wasn’t wanted where I was, it was just – again this was three years ago and quite a bit back in time, there were a multitude of reasons and it was time for me to go and try something else. The opportunity that I wanted was there for me at the same time my deal there was ending. Everything lined up and the timing and the group I want to be with and all that stuff. For me it was an easy decision, but it is different for everyone.”
How would you describe driving the low downforce package?
“I’m not being smart, it just has less downforce so it has less grip basically. The corner speeds are slower, your acceleration is a little bit more. Since they took away the horsepower, it gives you some of that acceleration back because you have less aerodynamic drag. There’s less grip, less ill aero effects behind other cars back in traffic and all that. I think it can do definitely more opportunities to pass if you catch a car, especially if some of these tracks are aero sensitive to what we currently have.”
