Kenseth is philosophical about elimination

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In: NASCAR Cup Series News

It was difficult for Matt Kenseth to be too disappointed about his elimination from the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Kenseth doesn’t have a victory this season, and his No. 20 Toyota hasn’t been consistently as fast as the front-running cars of Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Jeff Gordon.

When his third-place finish in Sunday’s Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 at Phoenix International Raceway left him three points shy of the total he would have needed to advance to the final four-driver championship shootout next Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Kenseth was philosophical about the result.

“We were no match for the 4 (race winner Kevin Harvick),” Kenseth said. “He’s been lights-out here the last couple years or the last few years–whatever. But other than that, we were pretty good, so we had good short run speed, good restarts. I thought we did everything right, good strategy, good pit stops, all that stuff.

“Best we’ve ran here in a while. So overall, it was a great day for us. It wasn’t good enough to get us to the next round, but after last week (a 25th-place finish at Texas), I knew that that was going to be tough. We were probably going to have to come here and win, and we just didn’t have enough speed to do that.”

In reality that was the story of Kenseth’s season, one where his entire Joe Gibbs Racing organization spent much of the year searching for speed.

“From my side of it, I feel like we haven’t necessarily performed at a championship level,” Kenseth said. “I think my team has, in the pit stops and the strategy and the car prep and the morale–all that has been there, but we haven’t had the speed in our race cars.

“To still be in it all the way to the second to last race was a good feeling, to keep getting another shot. I wish we had one more.”

NASCAR Wire Service
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