Pit crew vital in ending Kenseth's losing streak

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- Last November, Matt Kenseth’s pit crew won the Union 76 World Pit Crew competition going away at North Carolina Speedway. Sunday, their prowess on the pit lane allowed Kenseth to win the Subway 400 in similar fashion.

How good were they? 14-second pit stops were the norm.

“When Matt was out front, he was really fast,” said team owner Jack Roush. “When it was time to pit, they put him out front again and again. If you look at the teams in contention for the championship over the past few years, pit crew performance like the (No. 17 team) brought today is essential. This bodes well for rest of year.”

It certainly does. Despite a solid 13th-place finish in 2001, Kenseth had a tumultuous year. In like fashion to his Roush Racing mates, his performance waned from the previous season. After two races this season, all four Roush teams rank in the top-10, including Jeff Burton in fifth and Kenseth in ninth.

“We kept telling ourselves last year, when one bad thing happened after another, that we were still a good team,” Roush said. “(We knew) that would not be the norm. It ebbs and flows. We certainly got less for our effort last year than in the past.

“I hope we continue to have the good fortune we’ve had in these first two races. Many of our competitors that we expected to be racing against are nowhere to be seen in these first two races. I’ll sleep good tonight I’ll tell you that.”

Likewise for Kenseth, who with the win broke a seemingly endless 60-race winless drought. Though the drought was lengthy, Kenseth didn’t sit around and stew on when his next victory might come. Well, not any more than normal, anyway.

“I always wonder (when my next win will come),” Kenseth said. “I’ll wonder that tomorrow. It felt like 160 races. We won Charlotte early on, and that’s a tough race to win. Then we ran really well the next few weeks.

“After that we really tailed off. That continued into next year, and after eight or 10 races we bottomed out. After that, we started to climb the hill again, started performing better. I was real happy with where we were at the end of last year.”

At the end of last year, Kenseth’s No. 17 DeWalt Ford pit crew ripped off the fastest time on pit road to win the World Pit Crew competition. Impressive, yes, but Kenseth was far more impressed Sunday.

“I was so happy,” he said. “Those guys were huge part of it. With par pit stops, we may have won, but we may not have won the race, too.

“You can’t do anything by yourself in this business. I couldn’t be prouder of them. They won that deal last year, but that was just one stop. They did 10 of ‘em today. They were just awesome.”

Kenseth’s Ford was awesome when out in clean air. He struggled in traffic, and at one point - with some 25 laps remaining - he was boxed in by other cars on the backstretch. At that point, he assumed his chance at victory had been reduced to nil.

Nope. After Mike Skinner hit the front stretch wall, his pit crew promptly saved him again.

“It always helps when you’re the first car in line,” he said. “Those guys were awesome today.”