Matt Kenseth steals the show!
Gives Roush teams 3 out of 6 at Texas!
By Cliff Maurand - Staff Writer
04/09/2002

Matt Kenseth may have started this race from the last starting position, but he wound up finishing it in first place. Kenseth's "worst to first" run on Monday seemed unlikely going into this event. Kenseth officially qualified in the 31st starting position, but due to an engine change following Fridays practice session, he had to start from the rear of the field under NASCAR's new "one engine" rule.

Kenseth picks up his second win of the season, and the third of his career. Car owner Jack Roush indicated that the #17 and #97 teams, which share shop space, are doing very well together. This win also provides Jack Roush with his third win at Texas, with Jeff Burton and Mark Martin winning the first two events ever held at this track. Since there has only been six races held here (including this race), that means a Roush car has won half of all races held here.

Finishing in second place was a hard charging Jeff Gordon, who also worked the field from behind, and still managed to challenge for the lead in the closing laps. Mark Martin finished third, with Ricky Rudd and Tony Stewart rounding out the top five across the finish line. The rest of the top ten were Jimmie Johnson, Sterling Marlin, Jimmy Spencer, Bill Elliott, and Terry Labonte.

Sterling Marlin still holds the points lead, and Kenseth is still in second place. But Kenseth's win and Sterlings seventh place finish made it possible to shave a third of the points spread, as Kenseth gained 29 points on the leader. Jimmie Johnson and Rusty Wallace traded places for 3rd and 4th in the points, Martin moved up three positions, and Jeff Gordon & Tony Stewart each gained 4 positions while Rudd gained five.

This was an odd race, as the first half went pretty much without incident. There were two cautions in the first half of the race, one was a mandatory stop for tire inspections, and the other was for debris on the track. During that first half, Dale Jarrett completely dominated the race, and team mate Ricky Rudd was right there behind him. Jarrett even picked up the bonus points for leading the most laps, and would likely have gone on to a top five finish and even a possible win, however... He ran out of gas, then was blocked in the pits by Jeff Gordon and wound up falling two laps down. Rudd also ran out of gas, and lost plenty of track position, but wound up making a strong comeback. Despite Jarrett's relatively poor finish, the return of Todd Parrott to the crew chief position was clearly evident in Mondays run.

Rusty Wallace led for quite a while too, taking the lead from Jarrett and Rudd and started running away with it. Tony Stewart also led for a bit, and Kenseth eventually found his way to the front late in the race.

A couple of notes of interest here concerning the race at Texas. The tracks new surface coupled with the harder tires used by the series did create problems for a couple of teams. There was a window of time (or laps) that those tires held up well, but once that pit window came around, it was time to change those tires. A couple of drivers wound up in the wall because of that, the first of which was Ward Burton.

Another thing about the new surface, is it reduced the track to pretty much one groove. And while drivers were able to make it around one another, it was by the grace of god that there wasn't more contact than what we saw. Dale Earnhardt Jr found out when Shawna Robinson held the line instead of going low, which sent Dale into the wall.

The new surface also made for some very fast speeds, which drivers had voiced concerns over this for a few days heading into the event. Surprisingly enough, there was very little car to car contact on Monday, with most incidents involving single cars only. Last item is, when cars are heading around the track as fast as they do at Texas, a spin into the wall usually makes for a big wreck as far as the car is concerned.

Complete race results and point standings have been posted.

You can reach Cliff Maurand at: cliff@maurand.com

Be sure to visit Cliff's site: Victory Lane Online