Conversation: Matt Kenseth

TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Matt Kenseth is as unassuming a superstar as you'll ever meet. If he's not decked out in trademark DeWalt black and yellow, you're likely to walk right by him. And he doesn't say much, either.

He lets his race car do the talking.

	The No. 17 DeWalt team has one of the fastest pit crews in Winston Cup racing. Credit: Autostock

Kenseth's stealth approach to everything NASCAR has helped land him in the proverbial Winston Cup Series catbird seat. With four top-fives and seven top-10s - both of which lead the series - Kenseth carries a 129-point lead into Martinsville.

But don't ask him about it. He's not talking. He did, however, take a few moments to sit down with NASCAR.com's Marty Smith last Saturday at Talladega to discuss his elite rank, the parking slot that goes with it and the current exploits of his feline friend, Lars.

All you ever hear from guys in your position is "It's too early to worry about points." Is being the Winston Cup points leader early in the season almost more of a distraction than anything else?

Not really. It's cool to be the points leader because everybody runs for points. It is too early to worry about it, but on the other hand we get the first parking spot, and we're ahead instead of behind. It's always good to be leading and up front, but it's too early to worry about it. I'm real happy with the consistency we've had so far -- real happy.

You have a keen knack for quietly negotiating the field. You won't hear a word about Matt Kenseth all day, then suddenly with 10 to go there you are, up front vying for the win. Is that more driving strategy on the track or adjustment strategy on pit road?

It's a little bit of everything, but mostly it's because we don't qualify well, really. I think if we qualified better and started up front, some of the days when we had a real good car, like Las Vegas, I think we would have led a whole bunch of laps and been up front all day.

But qualifying toward the middle of the pack kind of keeps us out of that position until the end of the race. But I think sometimes it's a little bit of an advantage, because we're in the back of the pack, working our way around traffic and trying to get our car to run to pass other people and make it work in traffic. That seems to help it out at the end of the race."

I'm going to start calling you the Silent Assassin. You dig?

I'm not sure whether that's good these days or not (laughing).

	Kenseth says the engine problems that have plagued Roush Racing in recent weeks seem to be over -- at least for now.

Much was made of racing back to the caution last weekend at Texas. What's your take on the "Gentleman's Agreement?"

It depends what position you're in. That whole thing last week, I feel like in hindsight, was a bad call. They probably should have left Jeff Gordon in the lead and left Kurt Busch and Ricky Rudd a lap down. The way it's always been told to me, it's scored at the line. What really happened is I didn't see Jeff coming.

If I would have seen Jeff trying to race me back to the line, I would have kept racing and beat him back to the line and Burton would have gotten his lap back and that would have been it. But I was just trying to help my teammate out and do the right thing there.

I didn't know Jeff Gordon said he'd never give anybody his lap back and didn't want his laps back, but I saw him do the same thing last year when he was leading for the 48 car.

So I think if the roles were reversed, if he was leading and the 48 needed a lap back, being a teammate, or the 25 or somebody, he would have let them back in, too. And if it would have been somebody else I was racing for points, I wouldn't have let them have the lap back. As a team, when you can, you've still got to try to help out your teammates.

Was that a confusing situation from the driver's seat right when it happened?

I knew what happened as soon as I saw Gordon go by me, but then it was too late. I wasn't confused until they let me stay in the lead, then let the other two cars go back on the lead lap. Then I was a little bit confused.

I figured Gordon was just going to let me stay in the lead, just because he didn't want to take advantage of the situation, he just didn't want those two cars to get back on the lead lap, which I totally understand. I was really confused when NASCAR put those cars back on the lead lap, and he was scored as the leader coming back to the caution, so I was a little confused by that."

Ever heard of a Wisconsin Waterfall?

No.

It's a mullet.

Never heard of it (laughing).

I recently saw you're "Driven to Read" poster. What's your favorite book?

CHECK IT OUT Kenseth's win earlier this year at Las Vegas Play video Listen to the Conversation! 909 KB / 7:23 Listen    ALSO  •  Kenseth's Driver Page  •  Team Page: Roush Racing

I like all John Grisham books. He's my favorite author. I like the lawyer-type stories and the guy-trying-to-steal-money and all the courtroom stuff that goes on in all the John Grisham books. I just read "King of Thorns," just got done with it the other day. That was pretty good.

My Mom got his autograph. I like his work, too. Let's check your statistical knowledge. Who is the only Winston Cup driver to finish every lap this year?

Nobody.

Nope. That would be you.

Nope. Nobody. The Daytona 500 was only 250.

Ohhh. He's smarter than I am. Nice. During our conversation last year, we discussed your cat, Lars, and how he was grounded due to various incendiary offenses. Give me a rundown of his latest exploits.

I don't know what he's torn up lately. Lately, he's been eating everything around the house and throwing it back up in the middle of the night (laughing). So he's been pretty good. We got him a little bit bigger house than what he had before so he's got a little more room to run around. He's pretty cool. I think he's almost 3, and he still acts like a kitten. So that's fun. He also wants to play and bite -- and run around wide open.

All we hear about is how great the Chevrolets are, yet you and Kurt Busch are first and second in the standings (heading into Talladega). What gives?

Well, I don't know. It seems like the Chevrolets are really good, but they haven't taken anything to the wind tunnel yet. Which, I'm not really sure why. They made a lot of rules and made everything pretty even, but what they did -- which you've got to commend Chevrolet for doing -- is the only thing they left you with is the nose and the tail.

So, obviously, they're going to go to work and design the best nose and tail they can design to make their car the best in the air. Basically, ours, being a Taurus, is four years old or something like that. So I just hope, even if they don't do anything this year, that we'll get something redesigned next year to catch up a little bit.

	Matt Kenseth celebrated his seventh career Winston Cup victory earlier this year at Las Vegas. Credit: Autostock

We should be a little bit behind. They just made something this year and ours is three or four years ago. Every time you make something it should be a little bit better.

A lot of your fans are upset with me for not mentioning you enough. I tell them it's because you like to fly below the radar. Am I lying to them?

No (laughing).

When you were racing in the Busch Series full-time, it was a premier series. In your opinion, has it declined since then? What's the state of the series?

In my opinion, it's declined a lot. When I first came down and made my first Busch Series race in 1996, I went to Charlotte, and they used to take the top 28 by time and the rest of the cars had to run that last chance race. I qualified 29th out of 72 cars -- there was 72 cars that showed up at that race.

We finished second or third in that last chance race, and made the race. I'm telling you, it was competitive. Then last year when they changed the engine thing it started going downhill a little bit. Even this weekend, there's only 40 cars here and only 20 or 25 of them are good cars. So the front is still very competitive.

The top-10 cars are real competitive and tough to beat over there. But the back half of the field has declined a lot. They're basically just getting some field-fillers in there to keep the field full.

It seems like there's some issues with lapped cars every week, too.

Yeah, it's almost to the point, in my opinion, that they need to think about doing something different. Because we're at places like Texas or somewhere, and the real slow cars at the end will be running two seconds slower than we're running and it's getting to be a dangerous situation.

They're in the way of the leaders all the time. All the time they're affecting the race. At Bristol, I watched that race on TV, and they're lapping those guys every five laps. I think there are some real slow ones at the end of the field that they either need to be more strict on the minimum speed or else reduce the field a little bit so we have a more competitive field and give the leaders more room to race.

You guys haven't had any motor trouble the past couple of weeks, so it looks like the Roush engine problem has been resolved. But that had to have been a pretty big concern at the time.

Knock on wood, things have been OK for us this year. You just never know. There's been some problems they've found that I think they've fixed, but you never know when they're going to creep up and when you'll have problems. It was a bigger leap to get through Texas, but just because we got through Texas doesn't mean everything's hunky dory for the year.

I feel good about things. They're working hard on some things to get us more power and keep the stuff reliable. But you're always a little bit concerned it's going to happen.