Matt Kenseth Capitalizes On Late Race Opportunity

[PressRoom-GFN]

By Deb Williams

HAMPTON, Ga. (March 8, 2008) – When race dominator Kyle Busch cut a tire with 24 laps remaining in Saturday's Nicorette 300 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, it provided Matt Kenseth with a victory opportunity on which he was able to capitalize.

Kenseth grabbed the lead from Jeff Burton on lap 186 of the scheduled 195-lap race, then held off a hard charging Kevin Harvick in a green-white-checker finish to claim his 15th Nationwide Series victory and his first at Atlanta since 2000.

“I felt like on the restart we had about a 50-50 chance (to beat Harvick) because Kevin was pretty fast on a short run,” said Kenseth, who led twice for 14 laps, including the final 13, in the race that had 22 lead changes among a record 11 drivers. “There were a couple of times I could get around him or stay with him, and then, after about lap 5, he would drive by me and leave me.

“I just didn't know. I thought if we could get through (turns) one and two real good and get a little start on him, we might have a shot at it.”

Prior to the final 25 laps, Busch dominated the event, leading five times for 153 laps. Then, on lap 171, Busch's Toyota cut a right-front tire and slammed the wall as he entered turn one. That left the race victory up for grabs.

Harvick immediately inherited the lead, then lost it to Jeff Burton a lap later when the sixth of eight yellow flags waved for Busch's accident. When Harvick, Burton and Kenseth pitted for fresh tires, David Ragan remained on the 1.54-mile track and took over the No. 1 position.

When the race returned to green-flag conditions on lap 176, Burton quickly passed Ragan for the lead and Kenseth followed to claim second. Harvick wasn't far behind. Kenseth's Ford overtook Burton's Chevrolet for the lead on lap 186, and Harvick soon relegated Burton to third.

Then, on lap 189, a violent three-car accident on the backstretch involving Dale Earnhardt Jr., rookie Bryan Clauson and Eric McClure stopped the race for 7 minutes 53 seconds while the track was cleared. All of the drivers escaped injury.

When the race restarted on lap 193, Kenseth was leading and Harvick was second, but only one green-flag lap was completed before Ragan's Ford suffered a cut tire in turn one. This sent the race into overtime, as the final yellow flag waved.

With a green-white-checker finish looming on the horizon, Kenseth executed a perfect restart and pulled away to a 0.159-second finish over Harvick.

“The car drove a lot better today than it did yesterday,” Kenseth said after winning his first Nationwide Series race since April 2007 at Texas. “I was worried (on the final restart) until I got off of (turn) two after we took the white (flag). I got a big run off of there.

“These tires at this race track really presented a challenge this weekend. I actually enjoyed them on these cars. They took a lot of horsepower away from us this year, as everybody knows. If we'd had last year's tires, we probably could have run wide open around here, but this tire you really had to handle a lot. It was important to get through the center and off the corners really fast, which I think made it a little bit more fun to drive.”

Crew chief Drew Blickensderfer said the Roush Fenway Racing team was concerned about its tires when the race started.

“We didn't think we had enough sets,” Blickensderfer explained. “ But it ended up OK. The cautions fell when we needed them to. We had a couple of long runs. We had a car yesterday that we thought was a 10th-place car. We made some changes overnight and Matt learned how to handle the tires on the COT car and our Nationwide car better than the other guys did.”

Harvick's second-place finish moved him into first in the point standings, but the California native couldn't hide his disappointment at losing the race.

“We put ourself in position to win and just kind of gave it away on that last pit stop (because it was slow) and just didn't have enough time to get back up through there,” said Harvick, who leads defending series champion Carl Edwards by 25 points. “I'm proud of my guys for everything that they've done, but disappointed at the same time for not capitalizing on the situation. When you get handed those situations you've got to capitalize on them.”

Harvick said if it hadn't been for the eighth caution flag, he felt he could have caught Kenseth and passed him.

“It seemed like his car would take off really good on sticker tires and we didn't need any cautions,” Harvick continued. “But we still put ourself in that position and that's the bad part. Matt was good on the restarts and good on new tires. I just needed a few laps to get where I needed to be to be able to come back and pass him back.”

The Nationwide Series travels to Bristol, Tenn., next weekend.

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