Matt Kenseth News

The season is over, and I wound up second. It would have been great to win, but we can't hang our heads over second place. Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 team did a great job in the second half of the Chase, and they deserve the championship. They simply outperformed us. Really, if you look at that team, they've consistently been the team to beat for the last three ...

Matt Kenseth made the most of his fighting chance, coming up with the strong performance he'd been missing in the last few races of this Chase for the championship. He wound 56 points short of the title with a sixth-place finish. Denny Hamlin (third) and Kevin Harvick (fifth) also raced well Sunday, finishing where they needed to _ ahead of Jimmie Johnson. Still, it wasn't even close. Turns out, Johnson ...

I guess Talladega lived up to the hype. Thankfully, we weren't a part of the drama. We had a great car and were able to lead some laps, but we just didn't have much help at the end. Still, it was a great points day for us and I moved up to second and am only six points behind Jeff Burton. We were sitting in sixth for the final 10 ...

Have you ever finished doing something that was so difficult, you felt it was about twice the work it should have been? That was me on Sunday. I know the race was only 400 miles, but afterward it felt like I had driven 800. I don't know what was wrong with the car. Robbie Reiser (crew chief) and the guys will be dissecting the car this week to figure it ...

Matt Kenseth earned his third Busch Series pole of the season Saturday at Kansas Speedway, hours before the start of the Yellow Transportation 300. Kenseth, a Chase for the Nextel Cup contender making his 17th Busch start of the season, is coming off a second-place finish last week at Dover. He is third in the Chase standings He earned the pole for Saturday's race when his Ford recorded a quick ...

I guess there's nothing really to talk about this week. Pretty much business as usual last weekend. Nothing too eventful at Dover. Yeah, right. Anytime something like this happens _ getting passed for the lead with six laps left, then running out of gas with two to go _ my first reaction is to get upset and frustrated because we should have had at least a second-place finish. But once ...

I really can't believe we got out of Loudon with a top 10. Actually, before the race on Sunday, my crew chief, Robbie Reiser, and my engineer, Chip Bolin, and I were talking and we all agreed that a top 10 would be a heck of a day for us. It wasn't pretty, but it was about the best that we could do, and that's all you can ask for. ...

ADJUSTED CHASE POINTS: 5,050 TEAM: Roush Racing HOMETOWN: Cambridge, Wis. AGE: 34 CAR: No. 17 DeWalt Tools Ford CREW CHIEF: Robbie Reiser BEST CHAMPIONSHIP FINISH: 1st (2003) OUTLOOK: Kenseth, the driver many believe forced the Chase format because of his lacklustre 2003 title run, has momentum on his side as he tries to win a championship under the new system. He's got four wins this season and has turned it ...

Question: NASCAR changed the championship format after your runaway title to ``add excitement.'' Did that offend you? Answer: ``Maybe when NASCAR first announced it, it did. They did wait until after New York, after we were done celebrating the championship, and I was thankful for that. But they maybe could have called and told us before they announced it to the media, even if it was just five minutes before. ...

Well, the Chase is finally here and now all anyone wants to ask me is, ``How do you approach it?'' For me, it's the same as the 26 races before. This No. 17 team has done a really good job of taking it one race at a time all year. Do I look at the points? Sure. But, I don't dwell on them or think about the different scenarios or ...