Kansas Speedway, October 7-10, 2004
NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series: Banquet 400, 1:30PM, Sunday
Matt Kenseth
Team: No. 17 DEWALT Ford Taurus
Owner: Jack Roush/Mark Martin
Crew Chief: Robbie Reiser
Chassis: MMR-20 (won at Las Vegas earlier this year)
Matt Kenseth on racing at Kansas Speedway:
“Kansas is pretty suitable to where we’ve run our best races this year and the outcome is going to be on the drivers and the pit crews instead of chance, so we feel pretty good about it. We just need to stay on top of all the little things like pit windows and adjustments during the race because I think it’ll come down to those two things along with how your crew performs. We’ve struggled here in the past, but we had a great test a couple of weeks ago.”
Crew Chief Robbie Reiser on racing at Kansas Speedway:
“It doesn’t hurt that we’re taking a proven car here. As for Kansas, it never comes together for us here for some reason. This was definitely one of the tracks—no matter if they changed the point system or not, that we were going to test.”
Fast Facts
Roush Racing is going after its 300th victory this weekend in Kansas City. Founded in 1984, Roush Racing has 299 victories in NASCAR’s NEXTEL Cup Series, Busch Series and Craftsman Truck Series, and road course events (IMSA, SCCA).
Matt Kenseth finished 14th at Talladega one week ago. He has 16 top-10 finishes in 28 starts in 2004. Kenseth has now been inside the NASCAR Top-10 for 64 straight weeks—the longest active streak.
This week, the team will bring chassis No. 20 to Kansas City, Matt’s favorite chassis that has won twice at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (’03 and ‘04). One year ago Kenseth brought this car to Kansas and wiped it out during a crash on his second lap of practice. The car was thought to be a loss, but Kenseth begged the team to rebuild the car from the chassis up. They did and the chassis garnered another victory for the team just six months later.
Though Kenseth only has one top-10 finish at Kansas in three starts, he was in contention in two of the events in the latter stages of the event.
The No. 17 DEWALT team tested at Kansas Speedway two weeks ago in preparation for this event.
