Despite issues, Kenseth adds to points lead

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Matt Kenseth dodged a major bullet that knocked him to the back of the field at Atlanta Motor Speedway and ultimately boosted his point lead following the Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500.

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With three races remaining, Kenseth's unofficial lead in the championship jumped from 240 points to 258 points.

"I feel good about where the points ended up after today, obviously, with only three races to go," Kenseth said. "But I wish we wouldn't have had some of the problems and that we would have ran a little bit better.

"But the positive is we finished probably as high as we ran all day, so that was good."

Kenseth finished 11th despite an accident damage incurred in the opening laps Monday when the race was restarted. He also fought to overcome engine trouble -- he was down on power due to a broken header.

"I'm not sure how bad the damage was -- I haven't even looked at it yet," Kenseth said. "But when it got caved in and the crush panels got knocked out I think it put some drag in the car, and that hurt us.

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"We ended up breaking a header somewhere in the middle of the race. These exhaust systems are tuned and it broke the header right off of the head and it lost a lot of horsepower."

Once again, Kenseth and crew chief Robbie Reiser proved their Roush Racing team has championship mettle.

"It was an uphill battle to keep it to where we could run up front," said Kenseth, who clawed his way as high as fourth at one point in the day. "But we just did all we could with what we had, and we got a decent finish out of it."

Kenseth's closest pursuer in the championship coming into Atlanta, Kevin Harvick, was never able to recover when he was involved in a crash on lap 201 with Dave Blaney.

Harvick, who led 24 of 39 laps run Sunday and then the first 17 on Monday morning, was seventh when he was pinched between Blaney in Turns 3 and 4.

He never ran higher than 17th after that and finished 20th.

Harvick was totally disgusted after the race and simply said, "It's over" to TNT's Marty Snider when asked to comment.

After Sunday's postponement, Harvick had said his Childress racing team needed to excel down the stretch in order to overtake Kenseth, which made his frustration Monday obvious.

	Kenseth is bidding to give Jack Roush his first Winston Cup title. Credit: Autostock

"In order to close the gap that we have to close in on we have to go out with the mindset to win races and doing what we have to do week in and week out," Harvick said. "We can't control anything that Matt or any of his guys do, we can only control what we can do.

"Everything is so close from second to sixth that if you don't go out trying to win races, you're going to be in trouble."

Harvick fell to third in the standings, 262 points behind Kenseth. The point leader said he was barely aware of Harvick's troubles.

"He was running by me on the track at times and I saw him pitting under yellow, so I knew they had some sort of problem," Kenseth said. "I wasn't really that worried about him because like he always says, he can only control his own car and we can only control our own car."

The race for positions two through six in the championship remained intense, however.

With three races remaining, Earnhardt is 91 points ahead of sixth place Ryan Newman, who crashed with three laps remaining while battling with Earnhardt for sixth.

Jimmie Johnson moved to fourth in the championship, 266 points behind Kenseth.

Jeff Gordon, who won for the second consecutive week, is 296 points behind in fifth.