Break of the Race: Matt Kenseth

CONCORD, N.C. -- The championship chase is all but over for Matt Kenseth.

The third-year driver dropped 305 points behind leader Tony Stewart after a disappointing 34th-place finish in the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway on Sunday. For the first time this season, Kenseth lost an engine.

"Everybody at Roush [Racing] has been working hard to give us more power," Kenseth said. "And this is the first one we've lost in a race. We were running good."

He was running great.

Kenseth looked like a threat to win, as he did here in 2000 in the Coca-Cola 600. He ran in the top five Sunday for most of the first 250 laps. But on lap 255, the engine broke, and his dream of winning was gone in a trail of smoke.

"It always gives an indication about three seconds before it goes," Kenseth said with a short laugh. "Something just let go."

The Ford driver was considered an outside threat to win the tight title chase, but his deficit is now almost impossible to make up. He stands in seventh, and there are too many other racers to catch.

Just five races remain in the season, but Kenseth isn't giving up.

"We still have some great race tracks coming up that I feel I can win at," he said. "This was one of them, obviously, but we still have a chance to win [some races]."

Kenseth does have some reason for optimism. He finished 2001 on a high note, with four top 10s in his final six races. But the remaining schedule -- Martinsville, Atlanta, Rockingham, Phoenix and Homestead -- is a bit different than last year, and Sunday's debacle was a huge blow. It's difficult to win a championship when you finish 30th or worse 10 times. Even if you win four races.

His only silver lining to Sunday was picking up five important bonus points for leading a lap.

Kenseth's car was its usual strong self at Charlotte. In his previous six Cup starts here, he had four top 10s. In this season's Coca-Cola 600, he was runner-up to teammate Mark Martin. On Sunday, he ran in the front pack with Kurt Busch and Bobby Labonte, and he took the lead briefly during a cycle of pit stops.

"There were a couple of cars that were maybe a little bit better," he said. "But we had a good car today."

Kenseth has had his share of bad finishes throughout the season, but this was only the second race he had failed to finish (the other was the Daytona 500).

The year has indeed been better than Kenseth could have imagined in February, but now his fleeting chances at a title are gone. Gone in a rare billow of smoke.