by Fr. Dale Grubba for RacingOnline – March 10, 2009
Matt Kenseth won at Daytona and in California, a dramatic turnaround from 2008 when he didn’t win a race. Then he finished last at Las Vegas. Known as a realist, that may be his reason for being cautious about where he will finish at the end of 2009.
Asked before the season got underway, Kenseth said he never makes decisions about what he is going to do. He hoped to get back to victory lane, make the Chase, and be a series contender. Those were his goals. He’d be disappointed if he didn’t. With two victories under his belt as the season gets underway he is off to a good start in accomplishing his goal.
Looking back he found the 2008 season disappointing. “The bright spot,” Kenseth observed, “was we made the Chase. We ran a couple of races good enough to win and didn’t. It was the worst season we’ve had since 2001.”
When Kenseth looks back at his lack of wins in 2008 he says he wouldn’t change anything to win. He felt he had a good enough car to win and sometimes had the best car on the track, such as at the first race in Michigan where it came down to a matter of fuel mileage. As Kenseth often says, “All you can do is your best every week and hope you end up in victory lane. It’s hard to win these races. You never know when your last one is going to be so you have to enjoy it when you do. You can get a dry spell for a while.”
When having one of those dry spells and in a position to win, would Kenseth push a little harder, gamble a bit to win? Kenseth claims he wouldn’t. “You know where your limits are, and what the car’s limits are and you are getting everything out of it. When you try to go further it’s not going to be a good result. This car (the COT) is more forgiving, but you are going to go slower because you are abusing the tires. At Dover Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, and I battled for the win. We couldn’t have raced one bit harder without wiping each other out. We were racing as hard as we possibly could. I couldn’t do any more. I got beat. If I’d gone back and run that race over I’d still have gotten beat. I don’t think I could have done anything different.”
When it comes to the COT Kenseth says he is comfortable driving it. Racing is a little bit different than it used to be. It is harder to pass. It is harder to get your car handling better than the next guys. As a result you see a lot of races being won on fuel mileage and being up front. Strategy is more important than ever before. “You have to work on getting your car the best you can, try to drive it right, try to call the race right, so you can be up front and have a chance to win,” Kenseth says.
Kenseth claims the COT, in his opinion, doesn’t have enough down force and is really tight by itself. It is really hard to get them to turn. At the same time NASCAR knew what they wanted when they built the car. They knew the splitter was going to be real close to the ground taking away approximately 70% of front travel. If some of that were returned the cars would drive better. “Whether anyone wants to believe it or not the better the cars drive the more we can race side by side,” Kenseth concludes. Then he adds, “The aero-tight problem has been an age-old problem even with the old car. I still think the racing is really good.”
Does Kenseth’s driving style suit the old car better? “Ya,” he admits, “it probably did. If we had cars that drove bad we could work on them until they drove like I wanted them to. With this car there is a lot less you can do. I like my cars to be a lot looser than you can make these cars. These cars always want to push in the middle. I have a hard time getting through that push in the corner. The cars are different, but not really that different.”
With victories at Daytona and California perhaps Kenseth and his team have found a way to put all that behind him. “I feel more confident about the team than I have in a long time,” Kenseth said as the season got underway. “I feel good about the changes we have made. We feel like we have added a person. Chip has more time to make the cars faster. He had to take a lot of time away from that last year to cover some of his crew chief duties. I think Drew (Blickensderfer) will do a great job. It is not a big adjustment for him to move up to the COT. In today’s world it’s almost all engineer driven. Sheets of paper give you all the recommendations on what you should run. With the present rules there is little we can do. The bodies are almost identical. All the cars within the organization are built the same. We have a lot of teams to draw information from, work with, and people to talk to.
“We’ll have to see how it goes. We can’t panic or do things different than you know how to do. That’s when things go wrong, you make mistakes, and nothing goes right. Then you start getting frustrated and that just makes things worse.
“I take it one race at a time, put forth my best effort each and every race and see how it turns out. That is really all you can do.”
This article was posted to the website on March 10th, 2009 • Click to view all related content in the following categories
