Matt Kenseth

February 17, 2009 - Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion, is in the midst of a national media tour after winning Sunday’s Daytona 500. Kenseth, along with car owner Jack Roush, participated in the weekly NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teleconference.

MATT KENSETH – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE IN NEW YORK AS THE DAYTONA 500 CHAMP? “I’ve had a lot of fun. I’ve really been enjoying the last two days a lot more than expected or maybe I thought I would. The only mix up in the whole week so far is that right now I’m locked out of my room in the hallway at the Waldorf. They’ve turned our keys off so me and Katie are sitting here in the hallway doing this call, but, other than that, it’s been really enjoyable. I had fun going on Letterman. The most enjoyable part of my week so far, honestly, has been seeing all the guys in Victory Lane and hanging out with them and then all the different text messages, emails and phone calls that I’ve gotten from so many different people congratulating me. That was really, really cool and really flattering and humbling when your friends and your peers call and congratulate you, but we’ve been having a great time up here so far.”

JACK ROUSH, Car Owner – No. 17 DeWalt Ford Fusion – HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE FINALLY WON THIS RACE? YOU’VE HAD A COUPLE OF DAYS TO LET IT SINK IN. “It’s way different than I expected. I had not planned on winning the Daytona 500 race. I went for years as a road racer to the 24 Hours and to a number of other road racing events they had. In fact, I won 14 times in 14 different road racing events before I started the Sprint Cup racing. I thought when you went to Daytona you picked up a trophy and grabbed $200 and didn’t have to go to jail or anything. I’ve been surprised to find that Sprint Cup racing for the Daytona 500 has been so difficult. We actually came close to winning twice at the Firecracker – came close to winning once and we won once with Jamie McMurray in the Firecracker (NOTE: Jeff Burton and Greg Biffle have also won the July Daytona race for Roush Fenway). But it was surprising to me that there was so much pomp and circumstance about the enshrinement of the car in the Daytona 500 Experience that they have at the speedway. The enshrinement of the car was an emotional thing. It had much more energy associated with it than I imagined. Of course, there was the ring that came in Victory Circle that I hadn’t expected and there are all the interviews and things and, of course, like Matt, I’ve been the recipient of a lot of well-wishing and a lot of congratulations that really surprised me and has humbled me beyond my description. This is my 22nd time of being down there and competing for this event and, like I said, I had pretty much put it out of my mind that I would ever win a Daytona 500. It was Matt’s tenth try with us, so Matt had not planned on being there for the Monday after the event and had to track back to North Carolina to get fresh clothes and things for the week that followed, and I had to delay my trip back home by half a day and it’s really been worth it. I know the spirits have picked up in the shop and, in fact, I was surprised that it was rained out. I was checking weather when they finally called the race and it came hours earlier than I expected, and as I walked through the garage area to the paddock area, I was met by a line of cars and people and teams that were coming off the race track, so I was late getting to Victory Circle, but Matt’s victory was a very popular victory among the crews and other teams. To a man, everybody that I passed congratulated Matt for what he was able to do and I tried to pass that on to him.”

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND AS YOU HEADED THROUGH THE WRECK? “Yeah, there are a lot of wrecks that you go through and some you get caught up in at times and then there are times where you see things and you think that maybe you made a good decision or you see the momentum of the car sliding one way and you go the other way, but, really, in this wreck it happened so fast. We were three-wide going up through there and cars were flying everywhere and I really didn’t have time to react. I turned the car left just a little bit and made it right through there and when I came out the other side I was fairly surprised. I actually thought I had damage and when we got through there and they said the car looked good, I was very surprised.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED –– IS IT BITTERSWEET TO WIN THAT RACE AND THEN HAVE NASCAR TAKE THE CAR FROM YOU FOR THE DAYTONA USA EXPERIENCE? “Yeah, that was a little hard to take in a way, but the good news is that with the car of tomorrow, which is of course the car of today now, NASCAR’s template rules and all the underbody and standardization of so many different things dimensionally – there’s nothing special about that car. In the previous series of cars if you won a speedway race with it, you were just sure you had to take it back to the next three times you went to races during the same year. But Matt had three cars that he ran down there. This car here seemed to work a little bit better from the beginning, but I talked to the crew chief, Drew, about it and Drew says that he felt like that in the shop the preparation that the guys did was better than what they were able to achieve at the race track from a bump stop point of view and it was just a matter of what they bolted on the car. But I’m confident that we can do without the car. I’ve been told that NASCAR is gonna pay me for it. I don’t know if they’ll consider it to be a $5 horse and I’ll get $5 for it, or what it will be, but the good news is that one day it’ll come back to us and it’ll be a collector’s item.”

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – DOES WINNING THIS RACE TAKE ANY PRESSURE OFF OF YOU FOR THE REST OF THIS SEASON? “It really doesn’t take any pressure off. It puts, I think, a little bit of a spring in everybody’s step. It probably gives everybody a little bit more confidence. Daytona is a totally different race than Fontana or Atlanta or Bristol or any of these tracks that are really the bread and butter of the season. I mean, those are the tracks you have to run good to be a serious championship contender, but it certainly does give everybody a little confidence. Except for last year and probably ’01, where we were winless, we for some reason have been able to – when we do get victories – get some early season wins for some reason. So I think it’s important to get off to a good start like we did, but we really need to go perform and try to win more races this year and try to be a championship contender. My goals are pretty high for this year and I think with the addition of Drew I feel more optimistic and more confident in my team and in the possibility that we have for this year than I have, really, honestly, in a long, long time. I know all the equipment is there. Roush Fenway Racing won a lot of races last year. We weren’t one of them, but they were able to win almost a third of the races, and we know the equipment is there and I really feel like I’ve got the team to win, so we need to go win some more races at these other tracks.”

WHAT WAS DREW’S REACTION TO WINNING HIS FIRST CUP RACE? “I don’t know. I know Jack spent a portion of his day with Drew today. I haven’t got to spend a lot of time with him. I saw him a little bit Sunday night and a little bit on Monday for the car induction ceremony, but he was very happy. I’m sure he was somewhat surprised too. Everything is downhill from here. He’s 1-for-1 and I don’t think he’s gonna keep a perfect batting average. It’s pretty awesome. Drew is a real smart guy. He’s got a lot of energy and I think he’s gonna be a great leader. I think he’ll be there to lead the DeWalt team, hopefully, for a lot of years, but he’s smart. He knows that team has been put together for a long time and Chip did a good a job with the guys and with the car and with all that stuff last year. He’s been around here for a month or two now getting to know the guys and kind of getting a lot more involved in working with the team, so I’m sure he’s still pretty happy today.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED –– HAVE YOU SPENT SOME TIME WITH DREW? “We had our debrief meeting as a group today with the crew chiefs and the engineers all together. Drew’s got a good grasp of it. He knows he was very fortunate to have Matt miss the wrecks that collected so many cars. You normally don’t have that kind of luck and having the rain come just as he was able to pass, that was almost certainly not the last pass that would have been made if the race had run to its normal conclusion, so it kind of fell in his lap and he knows that. But the fact is he prepared a car that ran from 39th to first and, arguably, of the cars that survived was one of the best cars out there, so he had a better-than-average chance of finishing had it gone to conclusion, but when you take the snapshot that is imposed by the rain coming, and you know you’re out of time, it’s just a matter of happenstance that the result occurs in your favor. Drew comes from a great sports-minded family. His dad was a coach in stick-and-ball sports. Drew was an athlete as a youngster. He’s sports-minded. He’s competitive, and he knows how hard it is to win, and he’ll be up for all the races in the future.”

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR LETTERMAN APPEARANCE LAST NIGHT? “It was fun. David Letterman, I don’t watch a ton of TV. I watch some TV, but I don’t watch a ton of TV shows, I guess. I’ve always really enjoyed watching David Letterman. I think he’s real funny and when I lived at home with my dad, we’d watch Letterman a lot growing up. We still watch him once in a while when we’re over by his place, so if I ever had to pick one show and say, if you could ever be a guest on anything, that would be the show and to sit in the chair by Letterman. So I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. It’s cool to be able to be invited and go on those shows and do the media tour and do all that stuff up here, so I had a good time with it.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED –– DID YOU STAY UP TO WATCH? “Absolutely not. I had to be up at a quarter to five this morning to get to North Carolina. I’ll have to get a recording of it and check it out in my spare time, but I didn’t see it last night.”

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – WHAT WAS IT THAT MADE YOU FEEL YOU HAD TO HAVE SOME CHANGES ON YOUR TEAM? “I don’t know if there was just one thing that told me that we had to do it. There were a few things and there were several discussions with Chip throughout the winter and I guess there was probably one day where Chip and I talked about a lot of stuff and I kind of walked away thinking that we probably needed to get him some help and get somebody in there to help lead the team and the group and the people and help keep his eye on pit stops and work on motivation and help do some of that stuff. I guess I kind of knew that and Drew as the first guy that came to mind. I pushed hard for him when I talked to Robbie at first and then I had a nice, long conversation with Chip about it and Chip was actually totally on board with it. He thought that would make the team stronger and he thought if it was for the betterment of the team he was all for it and then, of course, my next phone call was to Jack and I guess I must not have been too unreasonable over the 11 years I’ve been with Jack because he hasn’t denied a request of mine yet and he didn’t deny that one, either so, so far, so good. Of course, it’s only one race, but I really think that he’s gonna be the guy. He’s gonna be a good leader for the team.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED –– “Chip Bolin is a great engineer and he’s a good crew chief. Certainly, the success that Matt had with Robbie being crew chief was a great part enhanced by Chip being there and doing all of his magic on the cars. The technical side of the car, even with Drew in place, will be Chip’s responsibility as it’s been in the past. Chip is the leader for the entire team – for all the engineers – and he advises all the crew chiefs on many things. We were in a situation where we looked at what would make our team better and some of the magic that Matt had with Robbie Reiser at the helm was lost when Robbie stepped away. I take the responsibility for not recognizing that there was a hole there, so I didn’t manage to put enough – by human resource – enough people to help make up for Robbie’s hole to support Chip and to support Matt, and with Drew we’ve made that adjustment. Looking at that crew, the thing that’s really the best about it is the fact that they’ve been together since Robbie formed them nearly 10 years ago, so it’s just a matter of a couple of things at the top here that’s been necessary to get it just perfect again.”

MATT KENSETH CONTINUED – HOW VALUABLE WILL YOUR NOTES BE FOR CALIFORNIA THIS WEEK? “I think it’ll be pretty important. If it was any other year, I’d say they wouldn’t be that important with the other car, but since we’ve switched to this car and we ran it at every race track last year, there have been zero rules changes to the car, so we have the same exact aerodynamic package we had when we went to both races last year. None of that has changed and all of the rules are basically the same, so, of course, through that time you hopefully learned some things and you get a little smarter as far as your chassis setups go, but it’s not like we’re going there with a different kind of car, so we’ll look at what we did last year and we’ll try to improve on that. Of course, if the tire is different there are still some variables there with track conditions and tires and stuff like that, but, basically, we rely on our notes from last time with what we do and then they try to improve on that everytime we go back.”

HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO GAIN ANYMORE DOWNFORCE? “That’s something that we really can’t work on. Our guys are pretty smart and they’ve pretty much maxed that out right away. There are so many templates and rules and dimensions on the body and such that you can’t really improve the downforce. We have as much downforce as NASCAR will let us have and all the cars are basically the same. They’re very, very close, so that’s something we can’t work on. We can work on springs and shocks and bump stops and swaybars and mechanical things like that, but that’s really all they’ve left us to work on, so that’s kind of in their hands and not ours.”

WHERE DO YOU THINK THE ROUSH FENWAY RESTRICTOR PLATE PROGRAM IS NOW? “First of all, I think it’s different than it was two years ago. We used to have a very specialized car for restrictor plate racing and it was just a lot different than what it is now. I think they’ve worked really hard on the motor program and the engines seem to be running really good. The cars are way less specialized than they used to be. The Daytona car is not really much different than our California car. You could probably actually interchange the cars if you had to, it’s just very little that they let you do with all the new rules, so I think they’re better. I think we’ve had some good restrictor plate stuff in the past. I heard Jack’s opening statement. He forgot about a couple of wins. I think Jeff Burton and Greg Biffle have actually won the Daytona race in July as well, so I think our plate stuff is OK. I think we can be competitive and run with those guys.”

JACK ROUSH CONTINUED –– “As far as the lack of testing and the things we’re gonna see heading toward Fontana and the rest of the year, it’s not a lack of testing, it’s a restrict of testing to NASCAR tracks. I think it plays to the strength of the teams that have had success recently with this car and the success the teams have had with a good database, and the partnership we enjoy with Ford Motor Company technically gives us the ability to reduce a lot of data and reach some conclusions that may not be obvious. So the testing situation has played to our strength. The fact that we won at Daytona certainly gives us encouragement going to Talladega, but restrictor plate races are, as much as anything else, a jump ball. I heard Matt say the car behind him was wrecked and the car in front of him was wrecked on the Earnhardt and Vickers debacle, but you just had to be in the right place to be able to get through that. The car’s speed or the team’s strategy or anything else doesn’t actually have much to do with it. Most of the time when you go to a restrictor plate race, you stand the prospect of being wrecked with either something that’s not your fault or something you didn’t mean to do. On days when you can get through it and have a good car at the end, you’re really very lucky as much as you might be fast or well prepared.”