Burton, Kenseth charging but moaning about COT

LOUDON, N.H. -- Matt Kenseth is a champion, and Jeff Burton, a champion without a ring; so there was no mistaking the fact Sunday at New Hampshire International Speedway that both men were none too pleased with top-10 finishes -- no matter where they came from.

Burton, who once led all 300 laps at NHIS -- but with a car that today qualifies as ancient history in comparison to the current Car of Tomorrow -- started 26th in his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet and drove up to seventh at the end.

Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images

Jeff Burton

COT Results

Kenseth and Burton

Site	Kenseth	Burton
Bristol	11	2
Martinsville	10	6
Phoenix	5	13
Richmond	10	43
Darlington	7	10
Dover	5	12
Sonoma	34	3
Loudon	9	7

Kenseth, whose No. 17 Roush Racing Ford team has struggled mightily with the COT despite using it to maintain third in the Nextel Cup driver standings, started 30th and finished ninth.

But both men went almost as fast racing to the helicopter pad to leave the facility after the race as they did on the beguiling, flat 1-mile oval.

"We did end up passing cars on pit road and made some good adjustments and got it better, but we're not good enough to beat these guys," Kenseth said while hustling along, two dogged media members tightly in his draft. "With these cars it's all about being in the front. It's really hard to come from behind and do much with them."

Robbie Reiser, who was Kenseth's crew chief when he won the last Winston Cup championship in 2003 and who's been on the box for all but one of Kenseth's 15 career wins, shouldered a lot of the blame.

"There's no question we showed up here, and the package we had in the car was un-drivable, and we had to work on it as hard as we could," Reiser said. "Going into almost every one of these [COT] races we've basically been about a seventh- to 12th-place car -- and that's the way we've run.

"Matt's capable of winning these races and so is this race team; and they all deserve that. So it's my job and [team engineer] Chip Bolin's job to go back and figure out what's wrong with these racecars and get them to a point where we can win a race."

Burton was intercepted by a reporter who jumped onto the back of his golf cart and made a 55-second ride to the heliport. That was all it took to convey his feelings.

"We were real good on the tail end of a run, but in the middle of a run we weren't as good as we needed to be," Burton said. "But that was about what we deserved. We had about a seventh-place car, and that's what we got, so the guys did a good job.

"We've got behind on the Car of Tomorrow program a little bit and I think [Sunday] was a step in the right direction. I hope we can use the direction we ended the day with, moving forward.

Lap-by-Lap

Denny Hamlin went in for two tires on Lap 256, took the lead on Lap 257 and held on to win the Lenox Industrial Tools 300.

• Complete story, click here
• Notebook: More COTs fail
• Race Video, click here

"All we can do is keep building on what we learn. That's our business that we're in, and hopefully we can continue to learn, and I feel like we're working in the right direction."

NASCAR's loop data stats indicated both teams actually finished better than perhaps they should have. Burton's average running position was more than 11th, while Kenseth averaged 13th per lap, so they each bettered that by four spots.

A lot of those other stats, particularly in Kenseth's case, indicated the source of his frustration.

"Yeah, we definitely made it better [from the start to the finish]," Kenseth said. "We still sucked, but it was a lot better. It was about a top-10 car and we finished ninth, so we definitely made some improvements."

Again, Reiser was even blunter.

"Our job is to win races," Reiser said. "Our job is to give Matt something with which he can go out there and show his ability and right now we don't have that.

"It's our job to go fix that and to make that right. That's the job we've all got in the next couple months, before we run the next COT race that's not a road course, which is Bristol [in August]. So we've got some time to work on it and we've got to go do that for him."

Kenseth praised his pit crew, as usual, for making things happen on pit road.

"Yeah, [the crew] always do really good -- they always keep us in the races," Kenseth said. But he said he hoped the team could figure out how to apply the positive changes they made to the COT, moving ahead.

"I hope so," Kenseth said, letting out a long sigh. "Man, we've got a long way to go with these things to compete for wins.

"They're so sensitive to little things. There are only so many areas you can work, so the areas we can work we're just missing it a little bit.

"We've got to work on the front suspension and figure out how to make the front ends turn better and then, hopefully, we'll be more competitive."

Reiser, who laughed when asked if the COT was the most confounding racecar he'd ever faced, got serious in a hurry.

"We can be as frustrated as we want to be -- the bottom line is, this is what we've got to race and we've got to figure out how to get it to run," Reiser said. "I understand Matt's frustration because we don't give him a car that handles good enough to win races.

"That's a job we all get paid to do and it's something we've got to go work on."

"It was way tougher to pass on this track with this car, than it was with the other car," Kenseth said. "They're just so tight [and] you're just kind of at the mercy of the front tires in the middle of the corner.

"I thought it was a lot harder to pass than the other car, but my car wasn't right, either.

"The fastest car didn't win -- the guy who got two tires got out front and won, so I think it's probably more about track position with these cars than even the old ones."

Race winner Denny Hamlin and his Joe Gibbs Racing crew chief Mike Ford said the exact same thing on Sunday. (read story)