SALON

Monday, Oct 22, 2012 6:45 PM UTC

Kenseth feeling nostalgic in final month with RFR

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Kenseth feeling nostalgic in final month with RFRMatt Kenseth (17) crosses the finish line to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan., Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)(Credit: AP)

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Matt Kenseth had to choke back his words when he got to Victory Lane, fumbling with his sunglasses in an attempt to hide his emotions.

His 14-year run at Roush Fenway Racing is in the homestretch and Kenseth is going out with class, dignity — and wins.

He slammed his No. 17 Ford hard into the wall at Kansas Speedway midway through Sunday’s race, went to pit road to let crew chief Jimmy Fennig fix the car and then drove it to his second victory in three weeks. The bond between driver and crew was clear in the post-race celebration, even though Kenseth tried to play it cool.

“It really means a lot; I don’t want to get too emotional,” he said, talking fast to try to get through it cleanly.

Kenseth is leaving Roush at the end of the season for Joe Gibbs Racing for personal reasons he’s only vaguely explained in detail. The decision was made in June, but Kenseth couldn’t discuss it publicly until September.

Now that he’s in his final month with the team that gave him his break in NASCAR, he’s got to be feeling a bit nostalgic.

“I really want to thank Jack Roush, Robbie Reiser and Mark Martin. Without them guys, I never would have been at Roush,” Kenseth said in Victory Lane before shifting into the obligatory sponsor rundown. Changing the subject allowed him to compose himself, to keep these sentimental moments private.

Kenseth and Reiser have been together their entire NASCAR careers, and before that as short-track racers in Wisconsin. They moved to NASCAR together with a then-Busch Series team in 1997 and went Cup racing as driver and crew chief at Roush two years later.

Reiser guided Kenseth to the Cup championship in 2003, and as general manager of the organization has been part of Kenseth’s two Daytona 500 wins and 24 career Cup victories, which ties him for 26th on the all-time series list. He has made the Chase every year but one, and has won at least one race each year in all but two of his 13 full-time seasons in the Cup series.

Kenseth has also notched 26 Nationwide Series wins in what many believe is a Hall of Fame-worthy career.

He said he has never given any thought to his statistics.

“You never know when or if your next win is,” Kenseth said. “Especially as you get older, you really appreciate it more. I’m really, really thankful and humble to be sitting up here, honestly. It’s just a pleasure to drive (the Roush) stuff. We still have some races left we want to win. I just think it says a lot about these guys sitting here, Robbie, everybody else, how hard they work, give me the best stuff, give me a chance to win every week.”

And he means that, too. Kenseth will go out the final four races trying to close his run with Roush on top.

He was a decent title contender this season — Kenseth led the points for a six-week stretch during the summer, and was ranked second in the standings eight other times — but Kenseth was dropped to 11th in points when the field was reset at the start of the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

Any chance at winning a second championship vanished when mechanical problems and mistakes in the first three Chase races dropped Kenseth to last in the standings.

So even with his win three weeks ago at Talladega and Sunday’s victory at Kansas, Kenseth has only been able to rally to ninth in points.

“We’ve had two great races where they couldn’t be better, and we had four that probably couldn’t be a lot worse,” Kenseth said. “It’s been up and down. This season we started off real fast, could run in the top-five every week it felt like. We went through a couple months where we didn’t perform as well. Unfortunately, one of those months ran into the Chase.

“I just felt like we were a little off as a group, plus we made a few mistakes that we typically never make, have had some other problems that cost us some finishes. So It feels good to get here, have a fast car, have everything happen right, be able to get the win.”

More Jenna Fryer.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations