Photo by Larry N. Souders / Matt Kenseth speaks with the media at Bristol.
By Rick Sheek (rsheek@starhq.com)
BRISTOL – Matt Kenseth finds himself on the bubble in the Race to the Chase at 12th in the point standings.
The former champion of NASCAR’s premier series returns to the high-banked oval where he is a two-time winner.
“You always look forward to coming to Bristol,” Roush Racing driver said. “It’s always exciting. It’s never boring.
“It’s not always good, but it’s never boring, so I enjoy coming here.”
Kenseth prevailed at this concrete facility in the August stops in 2005 and ’06. Meanwhile, his teammates out of Ford’s deepest stable have also been ultra-successful in this bullring where attrition rates are high and outings are survival of the fittest.
“We’ve had some success with the old configuration,” Kenseth said. “We didn’t really run particularly well here in the fall, but yet Carl (Edwards) won the race and all my teammates ran good. So I think we learned some stuff from them, and I’m certainly looking forward to getting here and getting racing this weekend.”
Long-time crew chief Robbie Reiser, one of the sport’s best, has been replaced by Chip Bolin and Kenseth stresses that is just one of many changes his team is dealing fine with. There’s the first full year in his model of car, as well as this weekend second race on BMS’s current surface.
“It’s the same for everybody,” Kenseth said. “Everybody has has had to adapt to the rules when they change every year, so I don’t think it’s been any different.
“And switching crew chiefs, it’s different because Robbie’s not there – but Chip’s been there. He was our engineer when we put this together in ’99, and that’s been a huge part of how the car runs – especially the last few years. We’ve been working together for nine seasons, so that part wasn’t a big transition.”
Kenseth, unlike several other of the sport’s upper echelon, grades the current model as a good fit for the series.
“Probably the biggest thing, a couple of things come to mind, it’s probably a little safer,” Kenseth said. “They incorporated some things that we didn’t have before with the foam and the energy-absorbing stuff, and the seat being farther over to the right and having a little bit more room has probably been the biggest thing.
“Another big thing is getting a handle on the aerodynamics. Everybody’s got basically the same bodies on their car, whereas before we spent a lot of money and time on R&D. You could tune a car aerodynamically for the balance that you liked and work on that, where you can’t really do that anymore.
“Everybody is kind of in the same boat, and you’ve got to go back to working on springs, shocks and sway bars.”
estarsports
Leave a Reply