Kenseth's pit road mistake costs him All-Star victory

CONCORD, N.C. -- For 60 laps of Saturday night's Nextel All-Star Challenge, Matt Kenseth had the car to beat.

In 10 seconds on pit road, he went from hero to zero -- as in zero chance of winning the $1 million special event.

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What should have been a simple stop-and-go on the way to a big payday became a stop-and-go-too-fast for Kenseth, and it likely cost him big ... like, $781,615, which is the difference between the top prize and the $218,385 he ended up taking home (watch video).

"It wasn't necessarily a tough break," Kenseth said after exiting his Roush Fenway Ford in the garage. "It was a dumb mistake by me."

At the end of the third segment, after leading 18 of the 20 laps, Kenseth led the field onto pit road for the final time. It was a game of cat-and-mouse, because some cars took tires, some took a splash of gas and still others came to a full stop and went right back out with no changes.

Kenseth ducked in, stopped and took off again, right into the middle of a whirling, swirling bunch of cars doing the exact same thing. Amazingly there were no collisions as cars swept in and back out in some kind of bizarre ballet.

It was in the middle of the mechanized madness that Kenseth noticed he was a bit too fast.

"I was so busy trying not to hit anyone I looked down and I was 200 [rpm] over the 4200," Kenseth told crew chief Robbie Reiser after the call came in to move to the end of the longest line for the restart. "My bad."

It certainly was. Kenseth went from the penthouse to the outhouse in the blink of an eye, and although he cranked out a solid run to seventh place by the finish, his race was really done when the penalty was announced.

"It was real important to be up front tonight," he said. "When we were in the front, we were one of the best cars. When we were behind, we were just one of the guys for whatever reason."

Kenseth won the first 20-lap segment, leading wire-to-wire. In the third, he led 18 of the 20 laps. He really needed to be out front in clean air, and the penalty made that impossible.

"I was speeding to come off pit road," Kenseth said. "I just left pit road and there was a lot of traffic because we did a stop-and-go and I looked out of the mirror and looked back down and knew I was going too fast. I tried to jab the brake to correct, but it must have been a real short segment. It was just a dumb mistake that cost us the race." (Continued)