Matt Kenseth says his team has hit a string of bad luck. Credit: Autostock

Kenseth's confidence not lost despite losing lead

Matt Kenseth heads to Phoenix second in the standings, one week after losing the Chase lead to Jimmie Johnson. The advantage he has on Johnson this week -- Kenseth has won at Phoenix before.

Q: What's your outlook for your team going into Phoenix?

Kenseth: Not as good as it was a few weeks ago I guess. You know, we're going to go there and try to bring our best stuff and hopefully run better than we have the last few weeks. So we're just going to go there and put forth our best effort and see how it turns out.

Certainly we have not ran up to our standards the last few weeks. For whatever reason, we haven't been performing the way we need to so we're just going to go there and hopefully get back on track. We're still close to Jimmie but we're certainly not running in the league that he's running in. So hopefully we can get back to that.

Q: Obviously with Jimmie having the momentum of the Chase and Tony Stewart having outside the Chase momentum, the way you have been running during the Chase, is it possible to sort of pull some momentum out of a hat?

	Matt Kenseth won at Phoenix in 2002. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Kenseth's Phoenix statistics Year Start Finish Status 2000 12 42 crash 2001 38 4 running 2002 28 1 running 2003 37 6 running 2004 16 36 engine 2005 17 42 crash   16 32 running 2006 4 3 running Average 21.0 20.8

Kenseth: Well, I think the team has been doing a pretty good job. I still think I've got one of the best teams in the garage. We just haven't been putting it together lately. We start with our cars not running good, and that leads to mistakes by me and not as good of a performance by everybody.

I don't think we're going to find a magic pill. We ran 30th, really, all week last week and just finished better. But really those were the times we ran was equivalent to a 30th-place car. So I don't really feel like we're going to find the magic and going like that to running like Jimmie is. But we're still close in points and anything can happen.

You know, you don't want to hope somebody has bad luck or hope to win it like that or anything, but you know, honestly we're not, you know, performing anywhere in the league that they are right now for whatever reason, for most of the year we have. Since Kansas for whatever reason we've been off and haven't been able to get that back. Going to Phoenix is a different track, it's a lot different than other tracks and we've ran pretty well there in the past and hopefully we can go there and get it on track.

Q: How is the crew hanging in there through these tough few weeks? Do you or crew chief Robby Reiser ever give them a pep talk?

Kenseth: I wouldn't say a pep talk would be the right way. I think Robby has more been there raising hell and figuring out why cars are not running the way they need to run. I think they are pretty good. Most of us have been together for a long time, and they do a great job as far as stuff not falling off and they do a good job on pit road and keeping us in these things and you know, battling through no matter how we're running.

These guys have been around for a while and they understand it's not -- there's always ups and downs, and we've had a lot of ups this season, and right now we're having a few downs at a bad time. So if anything, I think he's they're trying to, you know, figure out what we are doing wrong and what we can do to get back on track.

Q: As tough as Sunday was, does it still provide a bit of a lift to still, despite everything, end up 12th?

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Kenseth: Yeah, until Carl [Edwards] ran me over, I was a little bit in shock. We came in and got two tires there at the end and made it through my speeding penalty and stalls in pits and things trying to get us back in it, trying to finish seventh or eighth, probably tied in points, somewhere in that range, and still getting spun out there and staying on the track with a banged up car and finishing 12th was certainly better than we ran. It's, you know, nothing short of a miracle. We ran almost as bad as we did at Kansas, and still got a halfway decent finish out of there.

You know, we're lucky to be where we're at, but we're not dumb enough to think that we are running good enough to win the championship the way we have done it. We've only got two weeks to get the thing turned around, and, you know, I know we're capable of running with the 48 and them guys, and they have had four great weeks in a row. Maybe if they have a little bit of an off week, we can get back to running how we did earlier in the year and we might still have a shot at it.

Q: Can you compare the feeling now to when you won the championship?

Kenseth: Totally different feeling to have won it. Right now we're -- I wouldn't say we're down, but we're not up either. We're kind of wondering what's going on because the whole season, you know, kind of felt like a championship season. You know, we're contending for wins and we're getting good finishes throughout most of the season. Just things were really going right, and now they are not going quite as right and we still have lots of work to do. And it feels good because we are still in contention, but it don't feel good because we are not running good enough to pull it off.

We're still working right now. Last year or in 2003 we were kind of done, we had one race to go and we had the championship won which was a huge burden off it, that season-long points deal. Even though we had a pretty big lead, was a very, very, very stressful season.

Q: How much pressure are you feeling right now?

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Kenseth: I'm really not feeling any to be honest with you. I've been probably more relaxed through the Chase and through the last 10, 15 weeks than I can ever remember being in a long, long time. So kind of did some different things to kind of help myself manage my time and what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to, and to kind of concentrate as hard as you can and thinking about the cars and doing all of that stuff and not getting caught up in what everybody is saying and where exactly you are in the points, and just going every week and just running as hard as we can and just going home and try to figure out how to make it better.

Q: Is there a chance after these last two races of you losing confidence in the team, and the team losing confidence in itself?

Kenseth: No. I don't think so. I mean, Robby does a really good job of keeping them guys on the same page and keeping them guys kind of all stuck together and operating as a unit and not as individuals. So I'm not really worried about that.

We just need to figure out what we're doing wrong, first of all, with the cars and why we are not running good. We are missing something somewhere or doing something different or got something wrong, and we just can't really seem to figure out what that is. So I don't think anybody is losing confidence in that. I think if we show up at Phoenix and we have a competitive car, I think that they will still operate like a championship team, and I think if we don't, we'll probably be down a little bit why we can't get the cars any better, but certainly on race day we'll battle through and work on it as hard as we can.