Kenseth's shot at Cup history goes up in smoke

LAS VEGAS -- Only three laps had passed before the foreboding words came over the radio. "I think it's going to blow," Matt Kenseth said. And soon afterward, it did.

That was how Kenseth's bid for a historic sweep of the year's first three Cup Series races ended, with a plume of white smoke emanating from the rear of his blue and red No. 17 car. He limped off the track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway after just six laps, his season-opening roll brought to an abrupt, premature end by the latest in a spate of engine issues to plague the NASCAR garage area (watch video).

"I don't know that I've ever dropped out on Lap 1 before," Kenseth said as crewmen examined the damage under the hood. "It's never really easy. We didn't even really get to race today, and we qualified bad, so it was a pretty long weekend for nothing. It's disappointing no matter what. I'm glad we did great the last two weeks, but really, you take it one week at a time and shift your focus to that race each and every week. It's always disappointing when something like that happens."

Kenseth, who went winless all of last season, won the Daytona 500 and last week's race at Auto Club Speedway, in the process becoming the first driver to sweep the year's first two events since Jeff Gordon did it in 1997. No driver had ever won the first three events, and Kenseth's bid seemed doomed from the start -- his car struggled in practice, was faster than only six of the 51 vehicles that attempted to make the Shelby 427 in qualifying, and started sounding strange on the very first lap of Sunday's event.

On Lap 3, Kenseth pitted so his team could check spark plug wires, which looked fine. Crew chief Drew Blickensderfer radioed to Kenseth that the crew was discussing disconnecting a bad cylinder. They didn't need to bother. "You can start packing it up," Kenseth said. "I'm going to be there in about two laps."

And he was. It was the first engine failure suffered by the No. 17 team in two years. (Continued)