Kenseth takes Nextel Wake-Up Call press conference at Texas
November 4, 2005

Fort Worth, Texas — Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Power Tools Taurus and one of the Ford Five in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, was the Nextel Wake-Up Call guest this morning in the infield media center of Texas Motor Speedway.

YOU WILL BE RUNNING IN BOTH THE CUP AND BUSCH RACES THIS WEEKEND. YOU HAVE A WIN AND SEVEN TOP-10 FINISHES AT TEXAS IN THE BUSCH SERIES, AND A WIN AND TWO TOP-10S IN THE CUP SERIES. WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS FOR THIS WEEKEND? DO YOU EXPECT TO HAVE STRONG RUNNINGS?

“I guess I don’t expect it; I hope so. We usually perform well here in the Busch car, we didn’t run very good in the spring, but usually we’ve run really well here, so I’m looking forward to that. We had a pretty good test last week, I thought, with our Cup car. Greg performed really well here in the spring, obviously, winning the race, and the Roush cars usually run pretty good at these kind of tracks, so we’re hoping to be decent for Sunday.”

CURRENTLY, YOU’RE SEVENTH IN THE STANDINGS, 155 POINTS OUT OF THE LEAD. DO YOU THINK YOU STILL HAVE A VIABLE CHANCE AT THE CHAMPIONSHIP?

“I think we still have a chance — obviously our chance is not as good as the guys that are closer, but we still have an outside shot if something happens to the front couple of guys and we can have a good day and finish in the top five and those guys have some sort of problems, we’d be back in it. But, the chances are we’re a ways out of it and we’re probably not going to be right up there with the front two guys. So, we’re going to run as hard as we can the last three weeks. I think all the races in the Chase, except for Martinsville, I think we should’ve had top-fives. We ran in the top five at all those races, and I’ve been really happy with that.

“Our performance has been really good. So, if we can do that again this weekend and we can race up in the top five and finish there, I’d be satisfied with the weekend. All we can do is ask for the performance, and some of the things that have gone wrong in the Chase, I don’t think we could really control. I think overall they’ve done a good job and we’re not in a bad spot. Hopefully, we can climb up there in the points and if we can’t get all the way to the front and catch those guys, hopefully we can get up in the top five and get a good finish out of the end of the year.”

THE PGA TOUR ANNOUNCED THIS WEEK THAT IT WILL GO TO A NASCAR-STYLE PLAYOFF SYSTEM STARTING IN 2007. DOES THIS FURTHER LEGITIMIZE THAT NASCAR IS A BIG-TIME SPORT?

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it further legitimizes it, but I wasn’t aware of that. I don’t watch much else except for the Green Bay Packers, which has been frustrating, and racing, so I don’t honestly pay that much attention to a lot of other sports. I think in any sport, most other sports have always had it, football and baseball, and all that stuff to get to the end of the year and have a playoff-type thing. I think having it, being the second year, it’s obviously been a success. With as long as our season has gotten over the years — 15 years ago it wasn’t as big of a deal when there was less races, but now with all those races if somebody puts together a good season you can be a long ways ahead, so it’s definitely made it more exciting, tightened everything up in having a 10-race deal for it. So, I think it’s been more successful than people thought and I’m sure a lot of other sports look at that and see how it helped put people in the stands and helped the TV ratings and all that, and I’m sure they want to do the same for their sport.”

YOU’VE WON HERE ONCE IN THE CUP SERIES AND IT’S BEEN SAID IT’S TOUGH TO WIN TWICE. WHAT MAKES IT SO DIFFICULT TO WIN AT TEXAS TWICE?

“Up until now we’ve only come here once a year, so how many races have there been? Nine? Eight? We haven’t been coming here that long, the track is fairly new, and there’s only been one race a year, so there really haven’t been that many opportunities. There has been some, but as competitive as this sport is and how many rules they keep making all the time — the cars are closer every week, it seems, they get closer to being the same as they’ve ever been, and when you all hit your stuff right you can have a chance of being up front and beating somebody, even if you’re not the guy who’s been winning all year. You kind of see guys have real strong parts of the year and then not quite as strong and somebody else take over and have strong parts, so I think it’s been tough to repeat just because you’ve only been here one time a year, and it’s tough to go to a place one time a year and beat everybody.”

YOU MENTIONED YOU’D LIKE TO FINISH IN THE TOP FIVE IN THE CHASE. IS IT A BIG DEAL TO FINISH FIFTH AS OPPOSED TO SEVENTH?

“It depends. To me, if you can’t win it, it doesn’t matter if you finish second or 10th in a way, but our team and the way we do a lot of things, our sponsor and all that with incentives, with being in the top five and stuff like that, so in that aspect it’s better — obviously fifth pays better than 10th, and the teams get better bonuses because of that and it helps everybody out that way. In that sense it’s better to finish, but as far as bragging rights or feeling good about where you finished or any of that, I don’t think it really makes much difference. I think everybody wants to make the Chase, first of all, and I think everybody wants to win the championship. Tens years from now they’ll all remember who won the championship this year, and I don’t think anybody will remember who finished third or fourth or seventh, so it doesn’t matter that much.”

YOU MADE IT PRETTY CLEAR EARLIER THAT YOU WEREN’T TOO KEEN ON LETTING OTHER DRIVERS LEAD LAPS, EVEN IF THEY WERE YOUR TEAMMATE. LAST WEEK AT ATLANTA IT HAPPENED WITH NON-TEAMMATES DALE EARNHARDT JR., AND TONY STEWART. IS IT SORT OF WEIRD TO YOU THAT DRIVERS ARE HELPING OTHER DRIVERS, EVEN IF THEY’RE NOT TEAMMATES?

“No. That’s always happened, and that’s what Mark has always said, too. You’d always let a buddy do that — that’s the way it used to be before we had five-car teams and three-car teams. Junior and Tony are buddies and Junior wasn’t in the Chase so he’s going to let him get five points. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. If somebody’s got along good with you on the track and giving you breaks in the past and it’s not going to affect your outcome of the year and you want to help ’em, I think that’s okay.

And I think that’s okay for the teammates to do that for themselves, too, but, with everything going on and everybody talking about multi-car teams and everybody talking about all five Roush cars in there, I wasn’t about to pull over at Kansas and let one teammate lead a lap and then let the next one and then let them pull over and go back past ’em and do that whole rigamarole, I didn’t think that was real smart, with everything that’s going on, with some of the articles about NASCAR coming down on multi-car teams and all the Roush teams being in and all the big hoopla being made of that, so I didn’t think that was probably the smartest thing for me to be doing at that time, and I thought that also it was early enough in the Chase that we were racing all them guys and no matter they were a teammate or not it’d be really hard for me to go to bed at night — forever — if I let somebody get five points and I lost the championship to that guy by four points at the end of the year; that wouldn’t be very smart at all.

“If I wasn’t in the Chase, certainly I would help Kurt Busch get five points because he’s been a great teammate and he’s been a good friend and all that stuff, and I would let other people that were friends do that, too, if I was leading and had that opportunity. But if it’s going to hurt yourself — you can’t help somebody if it’s going to hurt yourself and hurt your own efforts and hurt your team, so at that time I didn’t think that was the right thing to do.”

ROUSH RACING HAS PRACTICALLY OWNED TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY SINCE IT OPENED. IF A ROUSH DRIVER DOESN’T WIN, DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’VE HAD A BAD DAY?

“I think it depends on the day. If we run good, whenever we finish in the top five and a lot of days even if you finish in the top 10 if you struggle you feel like it’s a good day if you can get a good finish out of it. People always ask that about Vegas; I know there’s not a magic thing, say we’ll always run this spring or this sway bar or this piece of equipment at this track and it’s magic and it’s going to work for us — it’s not really like that. The set-ups change so much every year, the rules change, the bodies change, tires change, everything. I think it’s bee a good track for the teams to figure out what to put in them to make their drivers get around here good and some of it’s been a coincidence, but the Roush cars have been running good at these type of tracks since last year. We’ve had awesome engines with Doug Yates and everybody combining the engine deal with Roush, and they’ve been really good. All these tracks we use a lot of throttle and you need big motors and we definitely have an advantage.”

THERE’S A FAIR AMOUNT OF UNCERTAINTY IN GARAGE SURROUNDING WHERE CERTAIN DRIVERS ARE GOING TO END UP AND WHAT TEAMS ARE GOING TO BE DOING WHAT. IS YOUR GROUP ABSOLUTELY SET FOR NEXT YEAR?

“I know what I’m going to be doing and who I’m going to be doing it with. I’m still driving the 17 car, DeWalts’s still on there and everything. There have been some team members that have already left and have pursued other opportunities — which you have that a lot. I’m not really sure until the season is over, a lot of them don’t tell you for good reason — it’s a competitive business, so I think we’ll probably lose some people at the end of this year, probably more than we ever have before as a group at Roush Racing, not necessarily the 17, but as a group. And that happens. Roush has been real successful the last three years, winning a couple of championships and having all five cars in the Chase, and when that happens in this sport, the way it’s set up, you always have the other teams come and offer ’em a bunch more money than they would offer ’em if we were running 15th every week. You know, they offer ’em a bunch a money and try to lure ’em away from you, and that’s just part of the business. It happens every year. Most guys stay loyal and stay there, but some guys got to do what’s best for their family, too, and go take the money when they can get it and go to a different team. This year I’ve seen a lot more of that. I’ve seen a lot more teams come in and try to raid us than I have in years past, and seen them be more successful than they have in years past. That’s part of it. You’re always going to go through times when you’re going to lose some people and have to rebuild and get some young people to come in there and do it again. So, I think in the long run it’ll work out alright.”

WHAT HAS BEEN THE REACTION IN THE ROUSH CAMP SINCE NASCAR’S PRONOUNCEMENT THAT IT WAS GOING TO TRY TO LIMIT TEAM SIZE?

“I haven’t talked about anything, or I haven’t really heard anything — I’ve just read half that article that I had seen in the paper, I read about half of it and that was about it. Nobody’s really talked to me about it, so I’m not really too worked up about it. I think it’s probably just something put out there because all the cars were in there, more than anything. I can’t really see it becoming a reality.

“They already have rules where you can only have so many teams, and there’s always ways to shuffle paper and do all that. But, I don’t know how you could ever say, ‘Okay, you’ve got five drivers there under contract for another four years, and you’ve got five sponsors that are under contract for three years, and you’ve got 300 employees, and you’ve got these two buildings and you’ve got all this stuff, and, by the way, you’ve got to get rid of one. You’ve got to fire a driver, even though you’ve got a contract; you’ve got to get rid of a $15 million sponsor, just because we said you can’t have that team, you’ve got to give it to somebody else; you’ve got to fire 30 people who are all working and supporting their families; and, by the way, your building is way too big, so you can’t have that many cars.’ How do you do that? I mean, we are living in America, so I don’t really see that being a reality. I think they want to make sure they don’t get bigger, and I think they’re a little worried with some of the other manufacturers coming in, how they do things. But, they’re always going to keep a close eye on it, but I don’t really see how they can cut down what we’ve had and built up and what Roush has done and what Hendrick has done and people like that.”

EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE IN THE CHASE, DO YOU THINK THE SEASON IS TOO LONG? WOULD YOU LIKE FOR IT TO BE OVER ALREADY?

“That’s a tough question to answer. When you’re running good, you wish it could go on for forever, and when you’re having a bad season sometimes you wish maybe you could get a little bit of a break. I don’t necessarily think it’s too long. I think we race too long at the end of the year without having an off-week. I know it’s the way the holidays fall and the schedule falls and this, that the other thing, but that off-weekend the second or third week of the year, whatever it is, is just ridiculous. You just get started and you get an off-weekend, and then we got to race, whatever it is, 18 weeks in a row, 16 or whatever it is, in a row at the end of the year without getting break to re-group and going into the Chase and all that, and by the end you can see it and sometimes I can feel it and I can see it in the people when you race all these races in a row at the end of the year with no break it starts to get you worn out at the end. I think it would be really cool to have an off-weekend, maybe, a week before the Chase starts. That would be great if they could shuffle the schedule where everybody could have a break and get ready for the Chase and everybody’s enthused and pumped up and looking forward to the 10-race deal — you know, for not just necessarily the teams but the fans, too. They’re saying, ‘Okay, we’ve got a week off, and they getting all gathered up and they’re racing all out for 10 races,’ I think that would help a lot. If we just had one week off there, I think it would help a lot for the guys and for the longevity for being on the road. It’s harder and harder to find guys, not necessarily to work at the shop but that want to stay on the road, too, because of that, so I think that would be cool. I don’t know if it’s necessarily too long, but it would be nice to have another off-weekend there — or at least one around or something.”

IT SEEMS LIKE THIS YEAR THERE’S MORE AND MORE TALK ABOUT BONUS POINTS. IS THERE MORE OF AN EMPHASIS ON GETTING THOSE POINTS THIS YEAR?

“No, not really. You always want to get as many points as you can, all year you want to get as many points as you can to try and make it, and once you get in you want to get all you can to try to win it, so I think there’s always been emphasis on that, you always try to get ’em. I’ve seen a little bit more of that this year with maybe some of the guys running in the back, that were more around 35th in points, to make sure they’re in that with the new qualifying procedures. I’ve seen that happen a lot more this year, but I don’t think with the front guys I’ve seen really a lot of that change. When you could, you’d always try to get five points and stay out under a green-flag pit stop or something like that and stay out a couple of laps and try to get them. They add up at the end of the year. They make a big difference.

“One of the years I lost the Busch Series championship to Dale, Jr. — he beat me by bonus points. He had 80 more bonus points than I had or something like that, and that can be the difference at the end of the year.”

GETTING BACK TO DRIVER MOVES AND CREW MOVES. THERE IS LOYALTY, BUT DO YOU THINK EVERY DRIVER HAS HIS PRICE AND WOULD MOVE IF SOMEONE OFFERED HIM ENOUGH MONEY?

“No. I know for sure that everyone out there [doesn’t], because I don’t. I know for sure that everybody doesn’t. I think that some people probably have different motivations for what they’re doing and their priorities are in different order — what’s most important to them and what’s least important to them — and to me, the way I came into racing, and racing with my dad, the top of my list of priorities is being competitive and trying to run good. There’s only 43 of us that get a chance to do this every Sunday and there’s, I don’t know, thousands and thousands of short-track racers out there that are just spending every dollar they make and going in debt and doing everything just because they love racing, to race. And that’s kind of how we started out. We all do good — obviously, as popular as the sport is, we all make good livings, and it’s all about being competitive and do good. That’s what it was all about when we started racing, we spent all the money we had, my dad did, and I did, what little bit I had, so that’s what it’s all about is running up front and having a chance to win. I think if you have that, I don’t think you could put any price on that to go somewhere else and not run as good — at least for me you couldn’t.”

LAST YEAR AT THIS TIME THE SERIES WAS AT DARLINGTON, WHICH HAS ONE OF THE SMALLEST SEATING CAPACITIES IN THE SERIES. HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO NASCAR TO BE IN TEXAS, WHERE THE CROWD WILL BE MUCH LARGER?

“I think it’s cool to be here. I don’t know how important it is for NASCAR, maybe that would be something to ask somebody else. As far as me being in the car, we love coming to Texas. It’s a great facility. Everybody is really nice to you. Eddie always makes you feel welcome here. There’s tons of fans here. It’s always a lot of fun to come here. But once the race starts, you don’t really notice if there’s 10,000 people in the stands or 300,000 people. You’re just out there racing other cars. But, definitely the atmosphere and I’m excited that we’re here for two races. I think we’re all excited to be here for two races, too. It’s been something I’m looking forward to.”

ALLOWING DRIVERS TO LEAD A LAP TO GET FIVE BONUS POINTS COULD BE ELIMINATED IF BONUS POINTS WERE ELIMINATED. WOULD YOU BE IN FAVOR OF CHANGING THAT?

“No, not at all. I think that would be a mistake because I think the whole reason it’s there, and you see it a lot, is to give people incentive to lead laps and try to pass for the lead and to try to pass for the lead and to try race hard for the lead - that’s what it was put there for, and that’s what it does. If it’s a 500-mile race and you’re running comfortable in third and there’s no bonus points to lead, why are you going to go up and race hard and put yourself in position to maybe get yourself in trouble or lose control of your car or do something like that and race as hard as you can and wear your tires to try to go lead a lap? Why are you going to do that if there’s no bonus points? I think definitely you got to leave bonus points where you have an incentive to go pass the leader and lead as many laps as you can to try and get as many points as you can. I know where we were trying to get in the Chase at Bristol, I was racing as hard as I could every lap, even though we led almost all the laps, to make sure we got the 10 bonus points, we got the most points for leading the most laps. I think the front guys race harder because they know those points are there. If you didn’t have them, I don’t think that they would be mixing it up as much as they do. I know you want to see that.”

WHY HAS ROUSH RACING HAD SO MUCH SUCCESS THIS YEAR?

“There’s been a few things. The last few years we’ve had really good equipment. Right now all five teams are doing a great job, all five crew chiefs get along, all five drivers get along and share information and do all that stuff, and we’ve all had decent-enough luck where we’re all in. There’s going to be years where none of us are in, probably. It’s just been circumstances this year with some other people having problems down the stretch getting into the Chase and not making it. With some of the teams doing a great job, all of the teams have done a great job all year, but the teams are doing a great job and having the right circumstances.”

YOU’VE WON A CHAMPIONSHIP. DO YOU THINK THAT SOMETIMES WHEN IT’S YOUR YEAR, IT’S YOUR YEAR, AND FORTUNES ARE ON YOUR SIDE? AND, YOU TESTED AT HOMESTEAD. HOW MUCH DIFFERENCE DO YOU THINK IT WILL BE RUNNING UNDER THE LIGHTS THERE?

“I definitely think there’s times where you can kind of get on a roll for whatever reason, and it’s hard to make things go wrong, and there’s times you can be running good and be in one of them things where everything goes wrong, no matter what — and that’s kind of how we were early in the year. Early in the year we were running third at Bristol and had a flat tire with five laps to go and finished 25th or something. I was running top-five at Phoenix and blew a tire with 100 laps to go and finished last. There’s times where times where things just don’t go right, either, but then there’s times when things go right. In 2003 we kind of had that, where we’d have problems and we still overcome those problems and get a good finish.

“Kurt had that last year. You saw him spin out in front of the field once or twice and nobody hit him and not hit anything, and a wheel fell off right when he’s going down pit road and not lose and lap and still recover from that and get a great finish. Sometimes when things are going your way they keep going your way and it’s always fun when that happens because it usually goes the other way more than it does that way. The Homestead under the lights, I don’t know. We didn’t test there at night with the lights on. I don’t think it’ll be any different. The lights are so good, it’s almost like daytime out there at all these racks were we race at night, So I don’t think it’ll be any different. The track still has pretty good rubber. I don’t really see it changing track conditions that much. I don’t really foresee anything different there. The only thing, I know at California when we start early like that and finish, the sun sets right in your eyes. I’m not even sure how the track’s positioned at Homestead and where the sun’s going to set. That would be the only thing that might be somewhat of a problem. But, other than that, I don’t really see much difference.”

ON THE TRACK SURFACE AT HOMESTEAD.

“There’s a lot of grip there anyway, because it’s new pavement. Whenever it cools down and the sun’s not beating down on the pavement, there’s probably a little more grip. But, in Homestead, the pavement there turns from black to white so fast, I don’t know, just because the sun’s bleaching it so bad all the time or what, but the pavement kind of changes quick there anyway. Usually, when it’s really, really black it changes more in the sun, but as white as it gets there, the pavement gets so light there anyway, I don’t if the sun really makes as much difference to the track conditions as it would maybe at some other tracks.”