On auto racing.

Make way for Mr. Average

Kenseth win could be catalyst for change

November 12, 2006|By Ed Hinton.

Poor Matt Kenseth. Here he sits in another awkward position.

He can either lose this Nextel Cup championship by a nose or win it in a way that would let the air out of NASCAR's playoff system.

Even with an average finish of 11th in this Chase, Kenseth trails in points only by his car number, 17, with two races left.

Considering leader Jimmie Johnson's recent momentum--a win and three second-place finishes in the last four races--this championship appears to be his to lose. And Johnson's history of late-season charges indicates he won't lose it this time.

But he could.

As Kenseth pointed out: "You could be a hundred points ahead and go to Homestead [for the season finale] and break an engine and lose the championship."

Kenseth meant anybody. But Johnson teammate Jeff Gordon fell hopelessly behind in the Chase with a broken fuel pump and a blown engine in excellent race cars in a three-week span, so not even mighty Hendrick Motorsports is immune.

So here sits Kenseth, who could collect his second Cup in the most lackluster way since, well, his first Cup.

Seems like his career highlight film is a series of awkward positions.

In arguably his most successful year, 2002, he won five races, most of any driver. Yet he wasn't much of a factor in the championship. He finished eighth.

Then in '03, he won the championship--ran away with it, clinched it early--but with only one race win.

That set off not so much a storm as a dismal downpour of grousing and controversy. Coincidentally or not, Kenseth was the last champion under the old format. His boringly won title has since been suspected as the one that led to the Chase playoff format, beginning in '04, the very next year.

Now he could be the guy who bursts the bubble of the Chase format by showing it for what it is: a playoff series that can be won with the same old puttering-around consistency as the full-season Winston Cup format.

NASCAR is already considering tweaking the Chase for next year. The new wing of the hierarchy privately seems to agree with my long-running contention that winning races should be weighted much more heavily.

So if Kenseth wins this title with an average Chase finish outside the top 10 and without a single Chase race win (he does have four during regular season) and NASCAR changes the playoff format in the aftermath ... well, poor Kenseth.

Regardless of his looming niche as dubious catalyst for change, Kenseth just doesn't like to win championships this way, period.

"You don't want to hope somebody has bad luck or hope to win it like that," he said. "But honestly, we're not performing anywhere in the league that [Johnson's team is] right now."

What baffles Kenseth is that "most of the year, we have." In the month leading up to the Chase, he got two of his four wins.

"Since Kansas (the third Chase race, on Oct. 1), for whatever reason, we've been off and haven't been able to get that back," he said.

Kenseth started a minor tempest Oct. 23 at Martinsville, Va., when he inherited the points lead despite a 24th-place finish and called the Chase "pretty sloppy so far." He knew he was at the top because so many other Chasers, Johnson included, had suffered lousy luck early.

He stuck by his statement the next week at Atlanta. And that's when Tony Stewart, who'd missed the cut, began to steal the show from all the Chasers, winning there and again at Texas last week.

The quick cure for the Chase, and for Kenseth, would be a last-ditch hot streak these last two races: Sunday at Phoenix and Nov. 19 at Homestead-Miami. A win or two, coupled with his strong regular season, would give him a championship nobody could pick apart--at last.

But his hope of resurgence down to the wire is bleak.

"I still think I've got one of the best teams in the garage," he said of his Robby Reiser-led branch of Roush Racing. "We just haven't been putting it together lately. It all starts with the cars not running the way they need to run. We start with our cars not running good, and that leads to mistakes by me, and not as good of a performance by everybody."

Take the season overall, and Kenseth doesn't feel so awkward. Indeed, he feels good that "we've had a strong year, probably a stronger year this year than we've ever had before."

Until Stewart hit his hot streak and Kenseth went cold, Kenseth had led the most laps this season with 1,131.

"So I think we've run as good as any team out there, overall, if you look at the entire season," he said.

But that's the way of it, it seems, for Kenseth. Just when he puts together a solid full season, he stands to win a title by sputtering through the playoff format.