Robbie Reiser has won NASCAR's biggest prize with Matt Kenseth in 2003. Credit: Autostock

Shop Talk: Reiser

Kenseth's crew chief on Homestead, the Chase and his future

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- The last time Matt Kenseth went to Homestead-Miami Speedway with a shot at winning the Cup championship he blew an engine on the 28th lap.

It didn't matter.

Kenseth was so far ahead in the 2003 points race that he locked up the title the week before at North Carolina Motor Speedway in Rockingham.

	Reiser and Matt Kenseth both believe their chances to win the Nextel Cup are slim. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Matt Kenseth at Homestead Year Start Finish 2000 38 21 2001 21 27 2002 13 40 2003 37 43 2004 30 19 2005 17 3 Average 26.0 25.5

He and crew chief Robbie Reiser don't have that luxury heading to this season's finale at the 1.5-mile track. They are in second place, 63 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson after entering the Chase with the points lead.

Reiser spent some time last weekend at Phoenix International Raceway talking about Homestead, where Kenseth has his worst average finish of any of the 10 Chase tracks, and the recent struggles of his team:

Q: Homestead isn't one of Kenseth's strongest tracks even though he finished third last year. What has been the problem?

Reiser: A lot of it at Homestead is the year we won the championship he blew up. We've run good there, we just haven't had great finishes. Homestead is an all-type of groove racetrack and you can drive all over the place where you can find a place where it kind of works.

We tested down there a month ago. It was one of our better tests, so we're optimistic.

Q: What car are you taking?

Reiser: We're going to take a car we won with at Michigan earlier this year. With where we are in the Chase, we need to run the cars we know. We've had a lot of success with that car this year.

Q: Kenseth says all the crew changes at Roush Racing have made things a "mess'' that has led to a dropoff in performance. Do you agree?

Reiser: I don't want to make excuses. But everything that goes on within an organization is going to affect what the team is doing. There's no way you can get around that.

All these guys don't just work for the 17. They work for a company. When a company has issues and things changing and going on it affects them.

Is that the reason we're running bad or struggling? No. That would be a big excuse. Everybody's attitude has been affected by that, but I do not think we have put a finger on what we have wrong with the cars.

That's not because we haven't worked at it. Talk to all of these guys. They've been working solid trying to figure out what we've got wrong and why it's gone wrong. Everybody is going to stand back and say, "Wow! How can you not find out what's wrong with it?''

If I could find what was going on we would have it fixed. I feel bad for all the guys that are on the team, including Matt. This is the first championship some of them are going after. I feel bad for them because we haven't been able to have the performance to be able to put this championship away.

If we ran the way we did all year, I don't think we'd even be discussing it. We would have enough of a points lead that we wouldn't be worried about it. Right now, we are not running at the level we need to run to even contend for the championship.

Q: That you're only 63 back, is that a testament to the strength of this team?

Reiser: That shows how bad everybody else is running. Everybody else has struggled and we've fortunate enough to be mediocre and be able to live through it.

I don't want to downgrade it. This is a tough garage to work within and everybody is working hard and there are a lot of great teams here. But in the Chase, there has not been a clear-cut guy that went up there and dominated.

Now the [Johnson team] in the last few races has done a better job than everybody else and they've gotten themselves in position better than everybody else has.

Q: So you have no idea what's wrong with your cars?

Reiser: At the beginning of the season we could get the cars to handle. You can't have all the top-fives [15] we've had, and the opportunities to win a lot of races this year without that being said.

Since we went to Kansas, we lost something and I don't know what that is. We have not been able to get the cars to handle for Matt.

You can't struggle as bad as we have on the track and come out with the finishes we have without the team doing their job. We're missing something in the cars and I don't know what.

Q: But you haven't finished worse than 15th since Kansas. You know a lot of teams would kill for that, right?

Reiser: That might be, but this team is built on winning. The reason these guys work on the car is to get an opportunity to win races and championships. That's what they want to do. That's what they are here to do, and that's what we get paid to do.

We are determined to do that every year. We've been competitive every year.

I wouldn't be happy running 30th every week. I couldn't stand it. I don't even like it the way we're running now.

Chase for the Nextel Cup After Phoenix (9th of 10 races) Pos. +/- Driver Behind 1. -- J. Johnson Leader 2. -- M. Kenseth -63 3. +2 K. Harvick -90 4. -- D. Hamlin -90 5. -2 Earnhardt Jr. -115 6. -- J. Gordon -167 7. -- J. Burton -225 8. +1 M. Martin -273 9. +1 K. Kahne -319 10. -2 Ky. Busch -359 • Complete standings, click here

Q: How much do you think your going backwards has to do with everybody else raising the bar?

Reiser: You don't run this strong all year and then everybody all of a sudden catches you. I don't believe that. If you go back two months ago, we won two races in a row. Now two months later, the whole field has passed us? I don't think so. We've got something wrong.

Q: But overall isn't this team performing better than when you won the title in 2003?

Reiser: There's no doubt about it. This is probably our best season ever. We could easily have 10 wins if not more than that the way we've run. There's a lot of races I can go back and show you in the last three or four laps that we've spun out or something's happened to us.

I made the mistake [on fuel] at Dover and lost that race. There are a lot of races we could have won this year. So it's frustrating to go through what we're going through right now.

Q: The other four teams at Roush are switching crew chiefs in '07. Are you committed to being with Kenseth?

Reiser: Unless they tell me something different or I get an opportunity somewhere else, right now that's the plan. I've been with Matt for a lot of years and done it for Jack [owner Jack Roush]. Jack's got a business to run and decisions to make and where he wants the business to go. I'm the crew chief for the 17 and that's what's going on.