Catchfence

Ford Racing

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – WHAT’S THE OUTLOOK FOR MAKING THE CHASE? “We’re right there on the bubble. If you take out the first couple of weeks of the season, the season has been a little bit of a disappointment for us. We haven’t run quite as good as we hoped to and finished probably worse than we ran most of the time through all kinds of different circumstances – fuel mileage or flat tires or what have you – but I look forward to going to Atlanta. It’s a great track. Hopefully, moving the schedule around a little bit will give Atlanta the boost it needs for attendance and people come out and watch a great race. I look forward to Richmond as well, so I’m glad we’re still in the top 12. I know it’s really close all the way back to 14th or 15th and I think it’s gonna be a battle right to the last lap at Richmond, so, hopefully, we can have our cars be competitive this weekend as well as next and get ourselves in that chase.”

IS IT MORE IMPORTANT TO MAKE THE CHASE THAN WIN RACES IN A SEASON? WOULD YOU AGREE? “I think it depends when you ask somebody. It’s been six months since we won Daytona, so today it seems like it would be more important to make the chase. But more times than not those two things go hand-in-hand. If you can be competitive and win races, more than likely you’re gonna make the chase, unless you just have the wheels really fall off the rest of the season, which we kind of have on-and-off a little bit, so both are really important. I don’t think you can be a serious championship contender without being able to win races these days. It’s way too competitive.”

WILL YOU WATCH VICKERS AND KYLE BUSCH THE NEXT TWO WEEKS? “We’ve just got to run our own race, really. We’ve been doing a little bit better lately. We’ve been more consistent. I think we found some things in our cars to make them a little bit faster and I think we’ve got some good things in the pipeline coming up and getting more competitive. But running where we’re running, we’ve just got to run as hard as we can and after Richmond next week we’ve just got to hope it’s good enough to get us in. We’ve just got to race as hard as we can because all of these guys are so good. Like at Bristol, we ran 10th which wasn’t a terrible run for us. That was pretty good for how we’ve been doing lately and the guys we’re trying to beat in points – most of them – still finished in front of us, so it’s really, really competitive and we’re gonna have to run probably better than 10th here the next few weeks. We’re probably gonna have to run in the top five, top six both races, I think, to be safely in.”

ROBBIE REISER HAS BEEN AT THE TRACK THE LAST COUPLE OF WEEKS AND LOOKING TOWARD NEXT YEAR. HAS THAT BEEN HELPFUL HAVING HIM THERE? “I thought his wife was just sick of him being at home. He’s probably driving her crazy (laughing). Jack has wanted him to come around the last few weeks, just to try and keep an eye on things – not just the 17, but from an organizational standpoint I don’t think it’s been quite the season that Jack hoped it would be. There’s only been two wins in the whole Cup season this year and we know we need to do better than that. Everybody is working as hard as they can to do better than that and I think sometimes it’s hard, with as big a role as Robbie plays in the company, it’s hard to analyze it all without coming to the race track. So I think it’s been good for him to get to the race track the last few weeks and kind of see what’s going on – what good things are going on and what things that maybe could be improved on and that type of thing.”

HOW WAS IT RACING WITH ROSS THE OTHER DAY? “It was fun. This weekend at Madison we raced against each other in the late model class that he runs up there weekly, so it was pretty fun. We ran two 50-lap races. The first 50-lap race couldn’t have been scripted a lot better. He started on, I think the outside front row, and I started maybe in the fourth row or something, and he was leading. I ran him down and we ran side-by-side for a few laps. I couldn’t get by him on the bottom and then I ended up passing him on the outside and passed him for the win in that race. That was a pretty good time and that was pretty cool to be able to race against him and we were able to finish first and second in the first race that we ran together, so that was pretty cool.”

ARE THE FORDS A TICK BEHIND EVERYBODY ELSE? “I don’t know necessarily as a manufacturer if we’re behind everybody else. When you think of Chevrolet, for instance, there are several teams. When you think of Ford or when you really look at Ford, it’s basically Roush Fenway Racing. Roush Fenway Racing and Yates Racing work hand-in-hand with the same chassis, same cars and all that stuff, and then you have the Wood Brothers who run a part-time schedule. So I think the new engine will help a little bit when we get that done, but I think it’s more us probably getting a little bit behind and having to get caught back up and figure out how to get back on top of the competition and get an edge on those guys.”

IS IT IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO BE ONE OF ONLY TWO TO BE IN EVERY CHASE? “It’s important for us to be in the chase every year. It’s important to try to win races every year and try to win a championship. That’s what we’re all in this for. It’s a performance business and you’ve got to perform every year. What everybody else does I can’t really control. I guess if we do end up sliding our way in here, I guess it’s pretty cool. Only a couple of us have been able to do that, if we can do it. But, really, you want to do it every year no matter what everyone else is doing. You always strive to be the best and you always try to win races and try to win championships.”

AFTER THE WAY YOUR SEASON STARTED DID YOU THINK YOU’D HAVE TO CLAW TO GET IN THE CHASE? “No, not after the first two weeks. After Daytona it was pretty crazy and I thought there was a good chance of going to California and maybe not running that well. You see a lot of people that have won the Daytona 500 and not have a very good rest of the season or be a championship contender and that type of thing, and then when we backed it up at California I was feeling pretty good flying home from California. I was like, ‘Man, this is gonna be pretty cool. We’re gonna have a real solid year and be a serious championship contender,’ and then we went to Vegas and broke on the first lap. Honestly, ever since then it’s just been a struggle. We’ve run good enough a few times to win races, if all the stars would have aligned – which they didn’t – but then sometimes it’s just been hard for us to get finishes for some reason. It’s been uncharacteristic of this team. One thing that we were always known for, it seems like, is if we were having a mediocre day and running 13th, 14th or 15th, somehow we’d finish how to finish seventh, eighth or ninth and finish better than we were running all the time. This year, more times than not, it’s been the opposite. There have been days like the first Pocono, where we ran second, third and fourth all day and couldn’t make it on fuel and finished 18th or something like that. It’s been a season full of that it seems like.”

WHEN DID YOU FEEL YOU GOT BEHIND? “When we got behind, I don’t know. Last year, Carl and Greg were able to win a few races. We went winless last year and just never really felt like we totally had a handle on the COT car. This year, at Daytona obviously we ran really good. All of our plate stuff has run good all year. We ran really good at Talladega and the second Daytona. California, we had a good car and just hit everything right, but we didn’t dominate the race really. We went to a few more mile-and-a-halfs at the beginning of the year and it seemed like we were real competitive, and then after that it just seemed we were not as competitive compared to our competition. I don’t know why or I’d go and figure out how to fix it, but we’ve just been working on all aspects of the program trying to get it better. Greg dominated Texas and then somewhere soon after that it seems like, as a group, we just haven’t been as good.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON BRETT FAVRE GOING TO THE VIKINGS? “(Laughing) I’m always a Packers fan. It’s tough to see him wear purple for sure, but you only get one chance at this stuff in life – professional sports – and to be able to do what he loves to do for a living and as long as he wants to play and somebody will give him a job, he should play. That’s pretty cool that he can be as good as he is at the age that he’s at – being a Packer fan you wish your franchise player would start there and retire there, but more often than not, that doesn’t happen in today’s sports world.”

IS IT DIFFICULT NOT TO FEEL EXTRA TENSION ON WHAT OTHER GUYS WILL BE DOING THESE NEXT TWO WEEKS? “It’s business as usual. Certainly, there’s probably a little bit more pressure and a little bit more nerves when you’re on the way home looking at the points and where everyone else finished – that type of thing – but when you’re in a race you have to do everything business as usual. There’s only one car and one team and, hopefully, the outcome of the race that we can control and that’s our own. Our own car is the only one that we can control. We can’t control what any of those other guys do, so we just have to go out and put forth our best effort, put our best foot forward, go out and race as hard as we can possibly race, finish as high as we can, and hope at the end of the day it’s good enough.”

TEN CREW MEMBERS AND ONE DRIVER HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED AS A RESULT OF THE SUBSTANCE ABUSE POLICY. DOES THAT INDICATE TO YOU THE POLICY IS A GOOD THING OR IT’S A WIDER SPREAD PROBLEM THAN PEOPLE WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? “I think testing is a great thing, for sure. I don’t know if there’s a wider problem than we thought when you look at all the people that are involved. In a perfect world, you’d like to hope that there’s no one doing anything they shouldn’t be doing out there. That’s what our hope is and that’s what the drug testing policy is all about is to clean up the garage and make sure that everybody is on the up-and-up. So I think it’s a great thing, especially with the economy here the last couple of years and the sport and getting the COT and a lot of people trimming their staff. It’s a great opportunity to be involved in this sport. It’s a privilege to be able to work in this sport and there’s a lot of great people out there that don’t have jobs right now because of people trimming their rosters. If you can clean up the garage and get the people who really want to work hard and take it as a serious opportunity to be here, that’s a good thing.”

HAVE YOU TESTED THE NEW ENGINE YET? “No, I have not. I know they’ve had an engine together for a while. I do not believe that it’s been in a race car in competition yet at a race track. I think they’ve run it at a few tests here and there, but I have not had one in my car at a test or at a race yet.”

HAVE YOU WORKED WITH ERIK DARNELL MUCH? “I really have not. Erik is from the Midwest and has run a lot of the short tracks where I used to race at. I think Erik is a great driver. I think Bobby Labonte is an extremely good driver also. He’s a great driver and a championship-winning driver, but I think Erik has done a really good job. I think ever since he got in that 6 Nationwide car and shared that ride with David, I think he’s run just as good as David has in that car and David has been doing it for a while, so I thought that was pretty impressive that Erik was able to get in that car and be that competitive right away. I think it’s a good opportunity to get into Cup and work with all the guys at Roush and see how it goes.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT ATLANTA. MOST GUYS LIKE IT THERE. WHY? “I love Atlanta. I think with stock cars in general they’re more fun to drive and a little easier to pass and put on a better show at tracks that have a fair amount of banking. Atlanta is really high-banked, really fast, really wide and the pavement is really worn out, so on new tires you have a lot of grip and you can go real fast and do those things, and then as the tires get worn out with that pavement, you get slower and slower and slower. For a track being that big and fast, the car starts sliding around almost like you’re on gravel or at a dirt track on old tires. That makes it a lot of fun as a driver because you have to manage the tires and you’ve really got to drive the car and move around and look around for a different line on the track for grip. There’s just a lot of variables and things going on, so it’s a lot of fun.”

DO YOU FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE WITH ATLANTA AND RICHMOND UP NEXT? “Yeah, they’re both really good race tracks. They’re tracks I really enjoy going to. The way the year has gone, there isn’t really one I go to that I have a ton more confidence than the next. We might go to one that I don’t really think we’re very good at and do OK, and we might go to one of our best ones and not do OK. So you never really know. You have to do the job each and every weekend, but, certainly, I enjoy both of the tracks coming up and I think they’re probably two of the best tracks we really have on the circuit. Richmond is a great short track you can pass on and put on a great race, and I don’t think there could be a better track to have the 26th race – the race before the chase – and Atlanta, now that it got moved up on the schedule, I think it’ll be a pretty exciting night.”

HOW WAS IT RACING WITH ROSS? “I’m sure I would have got a hard time for a few people, but it was really fun. It was a learning experience. I had a really good time. The first race couldn’t have been scripted any better, especially since I won. We got to run side-by-side and I got to really watch him as I was catching him – how he was driving and how he would attack the track – some of the different things he did. I actually got to learn a lot being on the track with him compared to being in the grandstands watching him, where I usually am, and got to see a few things where maybe I could help him out a little bit and saw some things that he probably did even better than I thought he did. He went home really disappointed. We actually won both features and he finished second, and I think sixth, which is still really good, but I could tell he was kind of disappointed. But he did a really good job and all of those guys did. It’s a really competitive series. I think they had 35 or 38 cars show up and it was a good time.”

WHAT IS ROSS’ POTENTIAL AS A DRIVER? “Ross, for being 16, does a great job. He’s probably ahead of where I was at 20 or 21. He does a really good job and he really likes it right now. He’s really into it. He’s doing everything he needs to do to succeed at that level, including staying out of trouble and keeping his grade point average where it needs to be. So he’s been doing a good job and I’ve enjoyed going racing with him and look forward to keep him moving up the ranks as far as he wants to go and work at it.”

- PCGCampbell for Ford Racing, Press Release