Teams have changed sport

Matt Kenseth has been racing in NASCAR’S top series since 1998, and the way things are now with multicar teams dominating the sport, it makes those days seem hardly recognizable.

“When I started, it was a five-car team (at Roush Fenway Racing) and Mark (Martin) and Jeff (Burton) were over here,” Kenseth said. “It was really different and nobody talked to each other or shared information. They had their two little groups and it was hard.”

Now, sharing notes among teammates is one of the reasons for the multicar setups.

“It is different today because the cars are almost identical and we share every single thing that goes on from the second they start getting built until the race starts and through the race and everything,” said Kenseth, a two-time Daytona 500 winner and 2003 series champion.

“I think if you look at the last couple years, all our cars run fairly close on the race track. Usually, typically, you don’t have a guy win and another guy run 20th and really miss it. It seems like we are all closer to each other than Saturday night’s Capital City 400 at Richmond International Raceway was not over in time for this edition for the AJC. Go to ajc.com for the results. I think you were in years past.

And when that’s not the case, the driver lagging behind works harder to catch up.

“Certainly I remember 2008 when Carl (Edwards) won those nine races and we were struggling a little bit,” said Kenseth, who won twice that year. “That is always hard on a guy to wonder why you are getting beat by your teammate when you are supposed to have the same stuff. That drives you to try to do better or try to be the best in your group.”

Two-time race winner Will Power edged defending Indycar Series champion Dario Franchitti to win the pole position for today’s Sao Paulo 300. Power had a lap of 1 minute, 21.4045 seconds on the 2.5-mile, 11-turn Anhembi circuit .