Matt Kenseth enjoys having the spotlight on others as he makes his march for the Nextel Cup championship. Credit: Autostock

Kenseth under the radar again as Chase heats up

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Some drivers seem to enjoy the spotlight, seem to thrive with all the attention focused on them.

When the pressure is on, guys like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon don't mind having the cameras in their face. They're the ones who get a lot of interest, and they're the ones who get mentioned as the favorites for the 2004 championship.

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But then there are the other guys who shy away from the attention and don't mind letting someone else hog the spotlight. Forget about them, and boom! they pounce.

Kind of reminds you of Matt Kenseth, doesn't it? He likes lurking in the shadows, content to let someone else steal the headlines. But when it comes time to produce results, Kenseth does.

He's the reigning champion of NASCAR's top series, and he's in a good position to win the title again. After a second-place finish at New Hampshire last weekend, Kenseth is only 10 points out of the lead.

Somehow, though, some folks don't think Kenseth can win the championship.

"I'm sort of used to that," Kenseth said. "Even last year, we led the points almost all year, and it was all the way until after the July Daytona race before anyone really noticed or said much about it."

In the end, he doesn't care.

"That's fine with me," Kenseth said. "I'd rather have the spotlight on somebody else and the attention somewhere else. I think it helps us do our job. I don't think it distracts me or the crew or any of the team guys or (crew chief) Robbie (Reiser) as much when they're not really talking much about it.

"The best thing to do is to try to win it and after you win or do something, the people are gonna remember and they're gonna talk about it. We have to prove we're worthy of that."

Kenseth has been in the top 10 in the Cup standings for 62 straight weeks. Credit: Autostock

He proved it earlier this season, winning back-to-back races at Rockingham and Las Vegas to take over the points lead he held for four weeks.

Since then, Kenseth hasn't been able to put together the string of top-five and top-10 finishes it takes to win the championship. After finishing in the top 10 in the first four races of 2004, he not been able to match that four-race streak.

"All season we've been running decent, but we've been very up and down," Kenseth said. "We haven't looked like we were gonna be consistent enough and run good enough to have a shot at the championship, so, first, we've got to go out and do our job and try to win some races and finish good these last 10 and put ourselves in position to try to win it again. Then we'll see if we were worthy of it or not."

Despite the inconsistency, Kenseth has still managed to stay in the top five in the Nextel Cup standings since Rockingham. And he has amassed eight top-five and 16 top-10 finishes in defense of his championship.

Not bad, but not the season he had a year ago. Of course, none of that matters now, for the Chase for the Nextel Cup has rearranged the points standings.

"When you had a bad day last year, it would eat you up inside," said Kenseth, who didn't have too many bad days in 2003. "You couldn't sleep at night, and it was real hard to take, whereas this year, so far, up to this point it hasn't been that bad.

"Now the last 10 races will be that bad because all the points count toward the championship, but going to Loudon, to me, felt like it was the second week of the year and those top 10 guys got off to a decent start at Daytona. It just feels like it's early in the year and everybody is real close in points. That's kind of what it feels like right now."

Which means any one of the 10 drivers can win the Nextel Cup championship. Three of those, Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart and Jeremy Mayfield, took hard hits in the points at Loudon, but no one has been eliminated yet.

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And that doesn't mean the other seven can take it easy in the final nine races, as some have hinted. Kenseth took some heat for that last year, and he still scoffs at the notion that a driver and team can race conservatively and win the championship. "I'd like to strap you in there and have you run a few laps because the people who said we were even being conservative last year is just hogwash," Kenseth said. "It's so competitive that you can't run conservatively. I mean, if you run conservatively, you're gonna run 25th or 30th.

"It's tough to go out there and run in the top 10 and run up front and even tougher to win races. Anybody can see that looking through the stats. Jeff Gordon used to win 13 races a year and now he wins anywhere from three to five, and it's just that much more competitive.

"There's more winners. The cars are more close to the same speed than what they've ever been. There's more rules than what they've ever been, and it's tough to run good every week, so you've got to go out and run hard. You've got to try to be smart and not put yourself in a bad position, but you need to go out and run hard every week and try to finish as high as you can." Do that, and you'll be content with the effort. If that effort translates into performance, you could end up the champion.

And that's when the attention comes.