So far, so good for Kenseth in title defense

Second-half rally sends Kenseth to another top-10

HAMPTON, Ga. -- Matt Kenseth came into Sunday's Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway with a chance to win his third consecutive Nextel Cup Series race, a feat that had not been achieved in six years.

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Despite failing in that effort, when he left he'd made another solid statement about repeating his NASCAR Cup championship.

After a spin on pit road and the subsequent pass-through penalty put him a lap down to the leaders in the race's first quarter, it looked like Kenseth's day was over.

But his Roush Racing crew never gave up, adjusted on the fly and, even though they were disgusted with their car's performance in the end, Kenseth's No. 17 DeWalt Ford battled back to finish sixth.

"I'm happy with our result, considering everything that went wrong," Kenseth said. "We had a great car at the beginning of the race -- a lot better car than that and I messed it up, so I'm mad about that.

"We could run with any of the leaders, but you could see it with Tony (Stewart), too -- he lost the handle in the middle of the race. I just don't know for sure where we went wrong, because we were pretty darned competitive until lap 150 or so.

"But even if we'd been near the front (at the end), we didn't have better than a sixth-place car because we got really tight. No matter how much we adjusted we never could get the car to turn the way it needed to.

	Spin on pit road

"In the middle of the race the track got tight and we never could fix it even though we tried everything we knew to do. It was a little bit disappointing we could never fix the car (because) I thought we had something better than that."

The biggest coup Kenseth executed was maintaining his lead in the standings, by 82 points over Stewart. Kenseth came into the event leading Stewart -- who led the most laps Sunday but finished one spot behind Kenseth -- by 88 points.

Crew chief Robbie Reiser credited his driver and crew for never giving up on the day, and laughed heartily when a bystander lauded him for a championship-caliber performance.

"As much green flag racing as we had today, we just never got completely caught up," Reiser said of the race's three cautions for 17 laps. "To come all the way back to sixth is something to say about this race team.

"They keep getting it every single week and never give up and it shows."

Kenseth took full blame for his pit entrance miscue on the first round of green flag stops.

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He pitted in the same cycle with the leaders and blamed a "long" brake pedal for causing him to take out the cones marking the commitment line for pitting, then spinning at the head of pit road.

"I made a dumb mistake getting on pit road," Kenseth said. "I knew I was coming in, I just couldn't get it stopped.

"Something weird went on with the brakes and the pedal went halfway to the floor. I locked the fronts up, so I let off the brakes and when I hit the brakes again it locked the rear brakes up and spun out.

"I guess I should have slowed down earlier, but I thought I was in control and I thought I was slowing down plenty. I thought I was slowing down the same as the guys in front of me and it just got away from me.

"We didn't have a lot of cautions to come back from it, so overall I'm pretty happy with the result."

Kenseth was in 34th after serving his penalty and proved how good his car was by charging back through the field on a long green flag run, to 21st while running faster laps than leader Stewart.

After the next round of green flag pit stops, which occurred while the race's first 126 laps were run under a green flag, Kenseth was 17th and the third car one lap down after Dave Blaney was given back a lap.

When the race restarted, Kenseth made a charge and was in position to get back on the lead lap in 14th when the race's second caution flew on lap 150. He restarted in that spot behind leader Stewart.

A couple laps after that restart, Kenseth made another great save when he dropped two wheels into the grass on the frontstretch in heavy traffic.

"Brendan Gaughan went up and ran into the wall," Kenseth said. "He almost wrecked me in the process. His car just got away from him and he ran into the wall."

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Kenseth hit a wall himself in the form of a pushing race car trying to get back into the top 10. He raced just outside the goal until the penultimate round of green flag pit stops, at about Lap 215, when he moved into 10th.

Kenseth quickly moved up to eighth and then took seventh when the engine in Jamie McMurray's car blew. Kenseth restarted in seventh after that caution, and though he ran as high as fifth after the final round of green flag stops, he was passed by Ryan Newman with 11 laps to go.

"We didn't get a chance to work on the car and every time we worked on it we made the wrong call," Reiser said. "We just got behind on it today but the way we started this year -- four top-10 finishes -- is something to say."

Despite missing a mark -- three consecutive wins -- last achieved in 1998 by Jeff Gordon, Reiser was satisfied.

"You can't win every week -- that's just the way it is," Reiser said. "Realistically, you ain't gonna win so I was real happy with a sixth place finish today."