Martinsville and Jimmie Johnson go together like bread and butter. Even championship contender Matt Kenseth said, “…you can almost pencil the 48 in here.” Johnson has been extremely impressive, with eight wins in 23 starts. He comes into the weekend with a slim four point lead over Kenseth.
Kenseth, who started off the Chase with two wins and the points lead, was asked if he would prefer to be leading or in the underdog mode chasing the leader. Kenseth replied, “I can’t imagine for the life of me anybody that wouldn’t want to have the points lead or why you wouldn’t want to have it. Certainly, we started off strong. We still perform pretty well, we didn’t have the finish last week and that was really disappointing. A couple other ones we didn’t quite have the finish, but certainly I wish we were still leading and you would have want to have as big of a lead as you could and I think anybody would.”
Kenseth’s record at the flat half-mile is less than stellar, especially compared to Johnson. In 27 starts, Matt has only three top-5 and eight top-10’s. Johnson has eight wins in only 23 starts. This past spring, however, Kenseth seemed to have Martinsville figured out. Even though he only finished 14th, he led 96 laps and ran strong most of the day. 96 laps is more than he led in all of his Martinsville starts combined up to that point.
“I don’t know why it’s always been such a struggle, although I do feel like the last couple years on average has been much better.” Kenseth continued, “This spring at least the first half of the race we were really good and really competitive, and really, really helped me be better because we had the car good.”
Before this season, Kenseth had started all of his Martinsville races with Roush-Fenway Racing. He made the change to Joe Gibbs Racing after 2012 and has improved in several areas. The most noticeable of which is qualifying.
Johnson talked about how good Martinsville has been for him, “Without a doubt it’s been a good track for the No. 48 team. It doesn’t guarantee anything for this weekend’s race and we have to go out and get everything we can in this first practice session and then try to get our best two laps possible for qualifying. We all know how important that first pit stall is and it can make life so much easier come Sunday afternoon.”
Johnson seemed confident and very laid back on Friday. Those traits could spell trouble for the rest of the field. When this team is this confident, they are almost unbeatable, but more importantly, they rarely beat themselves. That is a crucial factor at this track. Drivers who get antsy, over aggressive and/or angry, will use up their equipment pre-maturely and find themselves hanging on for dear life.
Johnson was also asked about racing against Matt Kenseth now, compared to 2006 when the two went head-to-head. He replied, “We have had a good banter texting back and forth. For a guy that can come across dry, as we all know in here, he is awfully funny. He asked me to not pester him and ask him for too many tips this weekend and bunch of other things.” He continued, “I think his departure from Roush and then joining up with Gibbs it’s filled in some weak spots that you would normally think that Matt would have. This track is a perfect example.” Referring to the Roush-Fenway team’s historical poor performance at Martinsville.
