Sports
Email
Print
NASCAR Notebook Kenseth's bid for NASCAR history ends early
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: March 2, 2009
■ Matt Kenseth said he knew that his bid to make NASCAR history was over before the race even started yesterday.
Kenseth, seeking to become the first driver to win the first three races of the season, said he sensed a problem in his engine during the warmup laps at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. A caution on the second lap gave him a chance to head to pit road, where his crew quickly tried to fix the problem.
But once back on the track, he said knew that the motor was about to fail.
"You guys can start packing it up, I'm going to be there in two laps," he radioed his Roush Fenway Racing team.
Sure enough, the motor failed by lap six and Kenseth was out of the race.
"How you can blow up in warmups?" he questioned crew chief Drew Blickensderfer over the radio. "Anyway, great job the last two weeks. Pretty disappointing."
Kenseth won the season-opening Daytona 500 and followed it with a win last week at California to take the lead in the Sprint Cup Series standings and put himself in position to make history. But his weekend got off to a poor start when he came to Las Vegas fighting the flu, then had a poor qualifying effort that led to a 40th-place starting spot.
The motor issue prevented him from ever having a chance to get to the front of the field.
"I think it's the first failure we've had in over two years," he said. "It's just one of those things that happens now and again. It's disappointing we didn't get to race today."
Kenseth wound up finishing 43rd -- just his second last-place finish of his career -- and dropped to third in the standings. It was a far different feeling after the first two weeks of the season, when Kenseth returned to Victory Lane after a winless 2008.
"I don't know that I've ever dropped out on Lap 1 before," said Kenseth, whose previous worst finish at Las Vegas had been 20th. "It's never really easy. It was a pretty long weekend for nothing. It's disappointing, no matter what. I am glad we did great the first two weeks, but really, you take it one week at a time and shift your focus to that race each week."
■ Engine woes were a prominent problem at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, starting Friday when five Toyota teams had to change motors for various reasons.
The problems stretched into the race, though, when Roush Fenway Racing teammates Kenseth and David Ragan both lost their motors. Before leaving the track after his own early failure, Kenseth predicted that more engines would break before the race was over.
Sure enough, Ragan's went about 70 laps later.
"In four years at Roush Fenway, this is the first time I've had an engine failure," Ragan said. "On the restart, it just started skipping and popping and we switched ignition boxes because I felt like it might just be something small, but it kept getting worse and worse."
When word of the engine issues spread through the Roush Fenway race team, Carl Edwards immediately asked his crew what to do.
"Should I be worried?" Edwards asked.
"I have no information for you," crew chief Bob Osborne radioed back before huddling with Kenseth's crew chief to assess the situation.
Edwards' motor eventually did fail, with two laps to go while he was running fourth, and he finished 17th.
In all, three of the five Roush Fenway drivers lost engines.
"It wasn't something new or experimental, I had great confidence in it," owner Jack Roush said.
Mark Martin's engine also failed for the second straight week, another uncharacteristic malfunction from the typically sound Hendrick Motorsports. A team spokesman said that the issues were different in each of the two failures, and that crew chief Alan Gustafson called yesterday's problem "pretty catastrophic."
"It was a great run. I have to feel bad for Alan and the guys on the (No.) 5 car," Martin said. "They're doing a great job. We're learning and getting better and it was a great run. Encouraging run, but disappointing."
Martin finished 40th.
All the Toyota motors that were switched this weekend went the distance, and three Toyota drivers finished in the top 10.
■ A week after Richard Childress Racing struggled at California, the team bounced back to put two of its drivers in the top three.
Clint Bowyer finished second, Jeff Burton was third and Kevin Harvick was 12th as three of the four drivers combined to lead 79 laps.
"Hell of a rebound today," Burton said.
A week ago, Bowyer was 19th, Casey Mears 24th, Burton 32nd and Harvick 38th.
"Everybody just kept their head up and kept digging," Burton said. "I'm real proud of them for that. It's real easy to quit and give up when things are going badly. Our guys never do that."
■ David Reutimann continued his strong start to the season with a fourth-place finish.
It was the first top-five finish in Reutimann's career, and moved him seven spots in the standings to fifth. He was 12th at Daytona and 14th in California.
"You run around here for a couple of years and trying to get close to winning one of these things, and so we're a little closer than what we were," Reutimann said. "It's been great. I love my team."
Reutimann was one of five Toyota drivers that had to change his motor Friday, forcing him to forfeit his fourth-place starting position for a spot at the back of the field.
Then he had an early oil leak that the No. 00 team had to correct, but once fixed, Reutimann was able to drive toward the front on long runs.
Email
Print
