Stock rising for Kenseth, Roush
CONCORD, N.C. — Matt Kenseth hopes what happened Friday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway is a sign better times are ahead.
Kenseth’s recent return to racing is already paying big dividends for Roush Fenway Racing after he qualified for the pole position for tonight’s NASCAR All-Star Race.
The 46-year-old driver agreed to return to competition on a limited schedule this year for his original Cup Series team after being dumped by Joe Gibbs Racing at the end of last season. After making his 2018 debut last weekend at Kansas Speedway — he crashed with 15 laps to go and finished 35th — he will start alongside RFR teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr. on the front row tonight.
“I’m just getting started, so I am still in the catch-up mode,” Kenseth said. “I’m trying to get caught up to Ricky and just get running.”
Kenseth started racing fulltime on the top-tier circuit for team owner Jack Roush in 2000 before leaving in 2013 to race for Gibbs.
However, Kenseth struggled last year, and his past accomplishments — including two Daytona 500 victories and the 2003 Cup Series championship — made the salary he would command a hardship. He agreed in April to return to RFR and split time in the No. 6 Ford with Trevor Bayne for the remainder of the season.
RFR has struggled this season to compete with the series’ top cars, but this is a step forward.
“It’s neat to have both cars on the front row,” Kenseth said. “We have two cars coming out of the shop right now, and obviously … the goal is to put the cars on the front row.”
Fords earned six of the top 10 spots in qualifying.
Kevin Harvick, who comes in as the hottest driver in the field with five Cup Series wins this year — including the past two, at Dover International Speedway and Kansas — qualified fourth in his quest to take home the $1 million first-place prize.
Kyle Busch won last year’s All-Star Race, but history suggests he will have a difficult time repeating. Since 1998, only four-time All-Star champion Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time season champion, has scored multiple victories in the event. Busch qualified seventh. “Way, way slower,” Busch said of his car this year. “Everything all around. I think obviously the cars are just slower to begin with, but I think I was just a little tentative to it, which is what you’d expect, I guess, with no practice. I think it’s going to be a crapshoot on how this race goes and how it plays out.”
NASCAR just hopes it finally has some luck in how its midseason spectacle is received after years of failing to live up to the hype. Radical rules changes have been implemented with hopes of dramatically improving the action.
“I think it’s going to be intense. The draft will be big,” said Austin Dillon, who has finished in the top 10 just once since winning the season-opening Daytona 500. “It’s going to be what the All-Star race is supposed to be — a wild mess.”
That could very well be the result of this racing package for the cars, which restrictor includes plates. horsepower-sapping But prevented rain most drivers of the from day getting Friday much race is of ahead. a feel for what kind of passing, In an attempt NASCAR to create pulled more out the plates that are generally used only at superspeedways and chose a six-inch spoiler. The thought is the leader won’t be able to jump out to a large aerodynamic advantage, and the cars will run in tighter packs. NASCAR tried a similar experiment last year in the Xfinity Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the racing was well-received. But Charlotte is only 1.5 miles long, and the potential for pack racing creates many unknowns. The field will have 21 drivers: 17 previously qualified, three who will transfer in from a qualifying race this evening and the winner of a fan vote. The main event will be broken into stages of 30, 20, 20 and 10 laps. Overtime rules will be used at the end of stages so that no stage will end under caution, and only green-flag laps will count in the final 10-lap sprint to the finish.