Surprising and Not Surprising: Texas Samsung Mobile 500
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[/media-credit]With the honors of hosting the first night race of the 2011 season, here is what was surprising and not surprising in the Samsung Mobile 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Surprising: Although Matt Kenseth was dominant for most of the race, when the checkered flag flew for him, the usually stoic driver of the No. 17 Crown Royal Black Ford for Roush Fenway Racing was surprisingly emotional.
“After two years, I didn’t know if I’d be back here,” Kenseth said in Victory Lane. “I’ve been so blessed in my life with a beautiful family, a great team and I do what I love for a living.”
“I haven’t had something like this for a long, long time,” Kenseth continued. “I have lost a lot of close ones at this track. It feels good to be able to close it out.”
Kenseth’s win ended a 76-race drought dating back to his win on February 22, 2009 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. This was Kenseth’s 19th career win.
Not Surprising: From his 29th starting position, it was not surprising that Kevin Harvick just could not continue his consecutive win streak this weekend at Texas. The driver of the No. 29 Budweiser Chevrolet was entangled in a pit road problem early in the race from which he never recovered, finishing 20th.
“Our first two pits stops pretty much ruined our day,” Harvick said. “The 00 and 20 wrecked in front of us trying to leave pit road, so we had to stop, back up and move around them.”
Surprising: Speaking of those pit road incidents, it was surprising just how influential pit road problems were during this race. On the first stop with everyone in the pits, it looked more like bumper cars than the usually smoothly choreographed tire changes and refueling.
Both David Reutimann and Joey Logano sustained damage on pit road due to collisions and Dave Blaney got his No. 36 Accell Construction Chevrolet completely turned in the wrong direction due to a spin into his pit stall.
One of the costliest pit road problems, however, was the too fast entering speeding penalty that was assessed to Tony Stewart late in the race.
“Sorry, I knew I did it,” Stewart told his crew after being advised of the penalty on lap 276 of the race. Prior to the penalty, Stewart had overcome a collision in the pits at lap 11 to lead twice in the race for a total of 12 laps.
“You know, it took almost the whole race to crack the top-10, so to be in the position we were in there at the end, I guess is a good thing,” Stewart said. “But when you’re in that position and you can’t capitalize, it’s pretty frustrating. Speeding on pit road didn’t exactly help the cause either.”
Not Surprising: Just as in the Nationwide race, the race was relatively clean and green. The only major crash again involved Martin Truex, Jr., who for the second week in a row hit the wall hard. This time instead of Kasey Kahne buffering his hit as at Martinsville, Truex, Jr. took innocent bystanders Mark Martin and Regan Smith with him for a wild TMS ride.
“I’m OK,” Mark Martin, driver of the No. GoDaddy.com Chevrolet, said. “I didn’t see the pile up in front of us. Just racing.”
“Unfortunate deal for the NAPA Toyota,” Truex, Jr. said. “We were struggling but we were running our butts off. Once you make mistakes and you get desperate, you just get yourself in trouble. It sucks having this two weeks in a row.”
Surprising: Texas Motor Speedway may just be the surprising turning point for young Roush Fenway driver David Ragan. After qualifying well and being in position to even win in several of the past races, Ragan, who started the Samsung Mobile 500 from the pole position, finally got a good finish.
Ragan brought his No. 6 UPS Freight Ford to the checkered flag in the seventh position. His top-ten finish also moved him up to 17th in the point standings.
Not Surprising: Just as the Fords were strong all day at Texas Motor Speedway, claiming five of the ten finishing spots, Carl Edwards in his No. 99 Scotts Ford proved his ‘Iron Man’ status yet again.
Edwards overcame stomach problems to finish in the third position and claim the points lead in the process. The driver blamed his physical ailments on a new rice and bean dish that his mother had cooked for him prior to the race.
“I’m all hopped up on Pepto Bismol,” Edwards said in the media center after the race. “I hate to throw my mom under the bus but she cooked something last night that I don’t think was too good.”
Surprising: Behind the wheel of the No. 9 Stanley Ford, Marcos Ambrose had one of his best oval track efforts in his career, finishing sixth. This was the second top-ten finish on a mile and a half track this season for the Richard Petty Motorsports ace from down under.
“I’m very proud of the Stanley boys for putting together this result,” Ambrose said. “We’re starting to really click on these intermediate ovals. It’s great to be running out in the front of the pack and it gives us a lot of confidence moving forward,”
Not Surprising: Dale Jr. had yet another consistent run and finish. The driver of the No. 88 Amp Energy/National Guard Chevrolet gained the most positions in the race and finished in seventh.
Most impressive is his continuing climb in the point standings, this time gaining another two positions to claim the sixth spot as a result of his top-ten finish. Junior is no doubt looking forward to next weekend’s race at Talladega Super Speedway, where he is not only wildly popular but also has outstanding plate racing skills.
Matt Kenseth goes from knocking on the door to kicking it down in Texas
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[/media-credit]When Matt Kenseth won the Daytona 500 in 2009 he cried in his post race interview. It had been over a year since he had won and a man that many have never seen get emotional, Kenseth said he was going to cry like a baby. When Kenseth climbed out of his winning No. 17 Ford Saturday night in Texas he again seemed choked up but was ready to celebrate winning and a whole lot more.
Kenseth’s victory again ends a drought, a two-year one that goes back to February of 2009 at California when he won the first two races of the season. It was his first of the 2011 season and it came in dominating fashion after leading 169 of 334 laps. He delivers the second win of the season for Roush-Fenway Racing who won with Carl Edwards at Las Vegas early last month. RFR also sweeps Texas with Edwards’ victory Friday night in the Nationwide race and Kenseth’s Cup victory.
For Kenseth the win joins what has already been a great start of a new season. In early February his hometown team, the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl. Then a day after the season-opening Daytona 500 wife Katie gave birth to their second daughter, his third child. Now his 76-race streak is history as he moves to third in points.
“Feels good to get back to victory lane for sure,” said Kenseth afterwards. “It’s been a long time. You talk about the second place finishes [four of them] here, and I got beat at the end of a lot of these races. It’s great to finish second if you can’t win. But another way is like getting kicked in the gut. You have to come back. Like last fall you look at Jimmie, and you come back and look at the guys and you’re leading with two to go, three to go, five to go, and you don’t win, it’s always disappointing. So it feels good to have a night like we had tonight with a dominant car and to be able to get the win.”
The win has been in the making. RRF went to work after what can only be described as a rough start to the 2010 season. For drivers like Kenseth it was hard going from a contender to wondering if you were ever going to win a race again. But results started coming. Both Greg Biffle and Edwards found victory lane by seasons end. At the start of the 2011 season Kenseth was right there with them, ready, waiting and working toward his shot.
After a fourth place finish two weeks ago in California crew chief Jimmy Fennig said the 17 team was knocking on the door and would win soon. A week ago in Martinsville they showed their strength by battling back from a lap one penalty after Kenseth was caught changing lanes before the start/finish line. They finished sixth and headed to Texas where Kenseth won in 2002 and finished second last fall.
His qualifying position, fourth, was the first tale Kenseth had a car to keep an eye on. By lap 44 he was leading and wasn’t looking back as five caution flags and different fuel strategies couldn’t keep the Crown Royal team from victory lane and their 19th career win. Kenseth also becomes the all-time lap leader at Texas Motor Speedway and team owner Jack Roush was pleased to sing his praises.
“I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to do in 2011,” said Roush. “You know, we tuned up our engineering program with Ford’s help over the winter and we got a new Ford nose. Everybody got a new nose this year, but our new nose was better than our old nose, I think. And we’ve had our FR9 engine really up to speed. So all of that is going well. I can’t say how proud I am to be here with Matt, realizing that he’s not gotten the success that his effort has deserved in recent past.”
Even with a dominating car Kenseth admitted he was worried because as he knows sometimes the fastest car doesn’t win. With teams like Tony Stewart’s hoping that they could go the distance on fuel mileage it shook up the running order the remaining 100 laps. The strategies of Stewart and Kurt Busch, who led a portion of the race by being on a different pit cycle, might have been the only way Kenseth’s team was derailed as the clean air and starting position led to a convincing victory.
“The car was really good, but starting there made a big difference,” Kenseth said. “If we had started 20th or 24th where I used to qualify all the time, we wouldn’t have led all the laps, obviously. It would have taken us a lot longer to get to the front. Hopefully we would have still gotten to the front. So that was a big advantage. Qualifying is really important with cars, and Jimmy [Fennig] has really turned me into a better qualifier more times than not. We’ve been doing better the last six months than what I used to do.”
Kenseth also noted his starting positions have been improving, which he says is important in the current days of the sport. Normally he’s a driver that would start near the rear of the field but be at the front when the pay window opened. He was the original closer before Kevin Harvick. It’s rare to see a night like Kenseth had in Texas where he could hardly be caught and passed unless on green flag pit stops.
“We’ve had a couple like this, but not a lot,” he said. “Vegas is one that comes to mind, and that was a long time ago. It was, I think ’03, where we felt like we were straightaway ahead all night, and the car was just about perfect. But yeah, you don’t get a lot of days in today’s competition level where you can lead that many laps and dominate a race and get a win.”
Matt Kenseth — The Chase Maker
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[/media-credit]You just never know. Matt Kenseth was thankful for another win. The Samsung Mobile 500 Sprint Cup race gave Kenseth another opportunity. It was an opportunity he cherished because, as he said, you never know if you’re going to ever win another race.
On this night, Kenseth shouldn’t have been so worried. He flat out dominated the race. He led 169 of the race’s 334 laps—well over half. His only competition, if you don’t count his fellow Roush-Fenway Ford teammates, was from Clint Bowyer, he of the Richard Childress stable. Kenseth took care of business with smart driving and a fast pit crew, however, to win the race, the 19th of his career.
Once upon a time, way back in 2003, this same driver won a Sprint Cup championship. Back in those days it was the Nextel Cup Championship, but Sprint bought Nextel, and the rest is history. I can remember sitting in the press box at the former North Carolina Speedway at Rockingham and the buzz was that there would be a new championship formula for 2004. In that year, Kenseth had only won one race, but using the point system created by the late Bob Latford, which was based on consistency, he won the trophy. Those in power didn’t like that so much, and the Chase was born. Since then, I have always called Kenseth “the Chase maker.” It was his championship that started all this changing and moving by NASCAR to create the perfect system. Of course, if it was perfect, we wouldn’t be changing it year after year, but that’s beside the point. Kenseth, for all intents and purposes, is the reason for the Chase.
Back in those days, NASCAR was growing, going into new markets like California and places you know today and the old had to be thrown out, no matter how successful it was. The champ of NASCAR’s top division had to be a winner, something Kenseth was not. For the good of the sport, it had to be someone like Jeff Gordon or, heck, anyone who won races. And for good measure, throw Dale Earnhardt’s son into the mix. Yeah, popular folks who could be on the cover of magazines. It was also would create a playoff system like the NFL and MLB had since NASCAR was so concerned about their competition in the sports world. Matt Kenseth wasn’t that person. Here’s a guy who just goes out and does his job week after week. He’s not flashy. He’s almost boring to many people. He was not the kind of folk you need to be your champion. Never mind that he’s a good driver who always seems to be at the top of every finishing order. There had to be a better way. Enter the Chase.
Since then, the formula had been pretty successful from the standpoint of NASCAR. Kurt Busch won in 2004, which must have had the boys in Daytona Beach scratching their heads, and Tony Stewart got in once, but it’s mostly been Jimmie Johnson, a driver similar to Kenseth. No one would ever say that Johnson has the charisma of Gordon or Earnhardt. He just does well, and he wins.
So in the year 2011, the guy who created the Chase wins again after 76 races. A guy who just finishes well in most races. Give him the car and a little luck and he wins. I find it refreshing. Matt Kenseth is most often compared to David Pearson, a guy who took care of his equipment and always was around at the end. He’s a guy who always makes the Chase. And for a moment on a Saturday night, he was in victory lane. It may not happen again for awhile, but with this new season it appears he might. And he’ll be in the Chase, as usual. It’s a shame he didn’t win a few more races in 2003. We might have avoided the one system I consider to be an aberration. But, then again, that’s maybe what guys like Matt Kenseth do. Congratulations, Matt. You are a winner, no matter what others may say.
