Kenseth puts together late rally to get top-10 at AMS

HAMPTON, Ga. -- A broken transmission only cost Matt Kenseth four positions on the starting grid for Sunday's Kobalt Tools 500, when he had to drop to the rear of the field for the start at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

But a gutsy, persistent performance by the former Cup champion and Roush Fenway Racing team leader resulted in an eighth-place finish, his second top-10 in four 2008 starts. He also saw a four-position gain in the driver standings, to 12th.

Kenseth changed clothes in his team's hauler, and then grabbed bottles of water and a sports drink, thanked his crewmembers and hustled toward the driver/owner coach lot after wife Katie and son Ross, sharing insight into his day on his way out of the garage.

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"Well, it was an uphill battle because we were a lap down and just ready to go two laps down and we caught a caution," Kenseth said. "We had a good pit stop and got up there and got our [free pass] so it was a battle.

"I think it was about the hardest eighth-place I think we've ever had to do."

Kenseth's No. 17 Ford team had to change the car's transmission between Saturday's final practice and the race, so Kenseth had to drop from his qualified spot, 38th, to the last position in the outside lane, 42nd.

With outside front-row starter Dale Earnhardt Jr. and eventual race winner Kyle Busch leading large chunks of the race's early stages, Kenseth almost immediately lost a lap. And he came close to going down two laps on Atlanta's fast, 1.54-mile layout.

But what could have been a brutal outcome on a brilliantly sunny day ended with Kenseth's crew chief Chip Bolin returning from pit road to his team's hauler with a smile after 325 laps.

"Without Matt Kenseth driving that car, we'd have been two laps down," Bolin said. "But he's never going to give up on us, so we're never going to give up on him. So all we could do was work on it all day [because] we weren't gonna make it any worse."

Bolin and Kenseth were in good company with a lot of other driver/crew chief combinations, as they struggled to mate their chassis' adjustability to a hard-compound Goodyear tire.

"We worked on the car, trying to make it better, and ended up making it way too tight," Bolin said. "So we basically went back and freed the car up all day -- and we just battled loose-in when we got it to where he could get it through the corner."

Earnhardt and Busch were so good early, and there were only two cautions in the race's first 110 laps, that a lot of cars lost laps, including Kenseth's. By Lap 92, he was 21st, a lap down and third in line to get the free pass if a caution flew.

On Lap 114, Kasey Kahne spun coming out of Turn 4, the third caution flag came out on Lap 115 and Kenseth had raced into position to get back on the lead lap via a free pass. He must have been shaking his head inside his cockpit. (Continued)