Final-race win adds fuel to Kenseth's fire
As the short NASCAR offseason begins in earnest, teams remember a win and see it as a sign of things to come.
So imagine how much momentum Matt Kenseth's Roush Fenway Racing team has right now. It's hard to think about something like momentum being a factor when teams are sitting in their shops, crafting their cars that will race in the Daytona 500. It may be difficult to think about any carryover in a team that is changing crew chiefs for the first time since Matt Kenseth began racing in the Cup series.
Yet, there it is.
After all, new crew chief Chip Bolin has been with the team since its inception as well, and he and Matt Kenseth are familiar with one another's styles and temperaments. They understand not only what it takes to win together but also how to do it.
So as they head into the offseason, with a quick trip to New York first, they reflect not only on Matt Kenseth's win in the season-ending race, but also the rally the team put together that moved it from 12th to fourth in the standings in the final five races of the season.
It seems only appropriate that a team that spent 23 weeks of the "regular season" in the top five should battle back to finish the year there.
That finish should ease the impact of the crash and engine failure that caused them trouble in the Chase for the Nextel Cup. It should eliminate the feeling that dropping to the bottom of the championship-determining format created. Finally, it should fuel the team for next season just knowing that Matt Kenseth was one of the best in the closing races of the season and that, despite his setbacks in the Chase, he was comfortable and confident in the so-called Car of Tomorrow that will appear in all races next season.
That's a huge step for the team.
It's clear that the Roush Fenway teams faltered in the COT model earlier in the year, but the team started testing more and has clearly caught up to the field. Whether they've reached the level of the Hendrick Motorsports program — the organization fielding the teams of champion Jimmie Johnson and runnerup Jeff Gordon — will play out over the course of next season.
Now, Roush Fenway has even more of an arsenal. After all, the organization hasn't lost Robbie Reiser, the crew chief who won the 2003 Cup championship with Matt Kenseth. He's moved into the role of general manager of the Cup program, which means he will be helping everyone within the organization.
One could argue that Matt Kenseth brings even more to the track next year than he has in the past.
"Robbie will be able to focus on all the ins and outs of the things that happen on the shop floor and on the things that go wrong with pit crews and the things that they might do," team co-owner Jack Roush said. "He's been critical and supportive at the same time of what we've been doing with the other teams. He didn't have the prerogative and the opportunity to go fix them because of the way we were organized, but he's going to be able to use all of his experience to benefit all the teams."
Bolin is a senior engineer, a man who knows how to work on the technical aspects of the car, and he's someone who Matt Kenseth is already comfortable working with. All of that only accentuates the momentum this team is carrying into the offseason and 2008.
As Matt Kenseth looked over his final stretch, he seemed comfortable with how his team performed and the finishes he posted.
Roush looks at that and sees promise for the future.
"They certainly have a lot of momentum going forward," he said. "They're going to go into winter well. There won't be a great deal of anxiety about the fact that, 'Gee, we missed it. We don't know how to make these cars go fast.'"
Matt Kenseth agrees. He sees strong performances not only from his team, but also from Roush Fenway teammates Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards and Jamie McMurray.
The driver generally hedges when it comes to making predictions and isn't one to speak incessantly about how strong his team is. He's simply confident in their abilities and lets his performance speak for itself.
Still, he treads lightly but speaks optimistically about what this closing run and final victory spark in the group as it prepares for next season.
"I hope it carries over," he said of 2008. "I think that, especially the last five weeks, obviously there were a couple bad weeks in there, but I think our performance this year in the Chase without our problems was good enough to win any other Chase besides this one. Obviously, Jimmie and Jeff set a new standard. It was just unbelievable how good their average finish was and the things they were able to do. You've got to be pretty darn good to beat that, but, overall, I thought our performance was great throughout the Chase.
"We had a period kind of during the year where maybe we were a little off, but we started off pretty strong. The thing I'm most fired up about is I see the direction of the company going in the right way, and I feel like we're gaining momentum. This year we had a new head engineer come in, and we had some new driver-crew chief combinations, and all that stuff has kind of worked for a year. And we've been adding people, so just the momentum of the whole company feels like we're gaining on it. Greg won a few weeks ago, and Jamie won his race this year, and Carl's won a couple times and (rookie teammate) David (Ragan) has been really strong, so I just feel as a group that we're really gaining on it, so that really makes me excited for next year."
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