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Welcome to the Cup Scene Daily for
Vol. III,No.VIXII FINAL EDITION
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Quote of the day: "His official title is Dale Inman, you don't need any other titles."- Kyle Petty 7 DAY ARCHIVE SundayMonday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday INSIDE TODAY'S ISSUE: SAFER barriers will eliminate Darlington groove Kids in fast cars Wimmer's luck runs out The king's man:Petty Enterprises turns to a former crew chief for answers Robbie Gordon to field own entry in Indianapolis 500 As promised Drivers Excited About Racing At Atlanta With New Rules Package On a roll in Vegas Make sure all bets are off IMAX film gives viewers a seldom seen perspective Women of Craftsman Truck Series Feel Like 'One of the Guys' Everything I Need to Know About NASCAR I Learned From Judge Judy (and other media ramblings) Cup Scene readers speak out about the new point system
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Happy Birthday: Jeanne Barnes, Wilma Blevins, Kevin Graves, Fred Bickford Matt Kenseth and crew chief Robbie Reiser have the rest of NASCAR playing catch-up for the moment, but the rest of the Roush racing empire is being scrutinized for hints of chinks in the armor.
Jack Roush has divided his five-team camp into two operations this season. Kenseth and Kurt Busch, with crew chiefs Reiser and Jimmy Fennig are working together. Mark Martin, Biffle and Jeff Burton, with crew chiefs Pat Tryson, Doug Richert and Paul Andrews, are the other group. Team sources say that the two camps are sharing little, if any, vital information. Nevertheless, Sunday was a solid day just about all the way around for Roush Inc. While Kenseth was winning, Martin was rallying to finish fifth. "A long green at the end was just what the doctor ordered for this piece," Martin said. "We struggled to get going on the restarts with all that traffic and those lapped cars racing so hard. It was really strong at the end of the run. It was easy to pass guys at the end, but we didn't get enough long runs. On that last run we did, and that's what we needed. "We just needed a little wind in our sail, and now we can go to Atlanta and try to qualify a little better. We've still got work to do. We weren't good enough, but we were sure better than we had been." Busch, who finished ninth, would charge then fade: "We probably had a couple of things too aggressive on the car, to make the car turn, and we burned the right rear. It would go fast for about 20 laps and then we'd burn the right rear off the poor thing. "We've got a lot of work to do in understanding how we can use the four tires better." Greg Biffle lost an engine and finished 40th.
The race probably reduced many in the huge crowd of 150,000 to yawns of desperation that hopefully some racing executives in Daytona, Charlotte and Akron will notice and take action upon. In winning for the second time in as many races – he had led 259 out of 393 laps two weeks earlier at Rockingham – Kenseth actually took the lead in the Nextel Cup points standings a week earlier than he did the Winston Cup points a year ago. In 2003, Kenseth never relinquished the lead once he gained it. “I learned something,” added Kenseth. “I’m going to go home and watch the TV shows and see what some of the people said this time. It’s always something. We ran the race at Rockingham and it would be hard for anybody to argue that we didn’t have the dominant car, and all you saw in the headlines was that the caution (flag) didn’t fall right. We weren’t on the lead lap, and we shouldn’t have won and this and that. It’s always something, but I’d rather have them talking about us because we’re doing good than the other way around, I guess.” Las Vegas, the most unpredictable of locales, is the most predictable of race tracks. Since the 1.5-mile track first hosted a Cup race in 1998, Fords – or more specifically, Fords owned by Jack Roush – have won five times in seven tries. Mark Martin won the first and Kenseth dominated the last two. Roush cited the bookends in explaining away his drivers’ dominance. “Mark Martin (who finished fifth Sunday) is a pillar of Roush Racing,” said Roush. “He’s helped me build this thing. He brought to my attention that there was a young driver out there by the name of Matt Kenseth that thought very much like he (Martin) did. “Mark is ‘doctor superior’ at high-banked – realizing this is not real high-banked – but fast race tracks, race tracks where you can use a lot of grip, get on the gas early and go looking for the bottom of the track. Mark has a real good sense for that, and he saw in Matt much of the same methods and much of the same interest that he had in his race tracks. Matt is more like Mark than he even recognized in terms of the way he faces the problems of a race track. They’ll be very good at similar tracks because they have a similar outlook.” Goodyear's new softer tires and NASCAR's lower downforce package didn't do anything to improve the boredom, and they appeared to make things even worse. Cars were so spread out that spotters could have used chaise lounges.
But then Smith's Speedway Motorsports has been dragging its feet on such sorely needed safety improvements as soft walls, citing fiscal issues. While that debate simmers, Kenseth and car owner Jack Roush are just smiling, because they have this little part of the sports world in the palms of their hands. Credit horsepower. Or, as Robbie Loomis, Jeff Gordon's crew chief, put Matt Kenseth's start to the season in perspective: "All those years Matt had to run without a motor, he had to work on making his car drive good - and now he's got motor, too." Kenseth's edge could be as much as 40 more horsepower, if NASCAR's chassis-dyno figures are to be believed. And Roush says he still hasn't plugged in the new Ford cylinder heads, although they should be on line by early April or May. "My engines are awesome," Kenseth said. "It's unbelievable." Now those who watched Roush acting so giddy at Daytona during January testing know exactly why he was acting like a man with a couple of aces in the hole. Kenseth is not known as a gambler; he plays the percentages, and Sunday he played his hand just right. "It's great to come to Vegas," he said after his second straight win at the fast, flat track. "You don't always leave here a winner, so it's fun to come here and leave a winner. "We really had a dominant car, as good as the car we had at Rockingham. It feels good to come out of the box this strong." NASCAR's new, shorter rear spoilers have provided an odd twist for drivers. "We have less drag," Kenseth pointed out. "And our engines run a fair amount better than they did last year. Plus, the tires are softer, so you're going faster at the end of the straightaway. "You used to be able to drive way in there with the tire that you couldn't hurt and a big spoiler, and it's hard now to get yourself to lift early enough so you don't abuse your tires and not drive in too hard. "I drove really, really hard until I got to third, and then I drove really hard until I got to Tony (Stewart). As soon as I passed Tony, I was worried about hurting the right-front. I ran hard for three or four laps to catch Kevin (Harvick), and then I could see Kevin was starting to struggle and his car was starting to slide. I just slowed down and tried to save my tires because we still had 35 or 40 laps." Roush said: "It's great to have the guys feeling they didn't miss an opportunity to improve, and it's great to have Matt winning two when there was a criticism we all felt for whether or not we'd race as hard as we could, whether we were really doing enough to deserve the (2003) championship. "It certainly means that we spent our winter well. With a chance to get a new set of templates for our Taurus, the engineers did a nice job." "We started off fairly strong last year, but throughout the year we got behind aerodynamically on our cars," Kenseth said. "Still, over the winter, it would have been easy to sit back and say 'We had a good year and won the championship, and we're not going to change anything.' But Robbie cut everything apart. "I was gone one time for about five days and when I came back to the shop he had the body cut off every single race car I had. I flipped out." "This winter is the most optimistic and the most excited I've ever been about a racing season," Kenseth said. "Jack and I and Robbie talked about how this was going to be the year we really got the tools to do great things. I think we've got a lot of great opportunities this year."
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