Kenseth, Blickensderfer ride roller coaster to Texas

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Matt Kenseth and Drew Blickensderfer might be just six races into their pairing as driver and crew chief at Roush Fenway Racing; but in that limited time they've learned how to "big-picture race" very well.

They showed it Friday at Texas Motor Speedway when, after practicing only 34th fastest, Kenseth shook it off to qualify his No. 17 Ford in third for Sunday's Samsung 500, behind pole winner David Reutimann and Jeff Gordon.

"It was kind of a surprise to me, to say the least," Kenseth said of his lap. "We couldn't find any speed in practice and could never run faster than a [28.] 90 no matter what we did. They changed just a few little things, really and these cars are really sensitive. I think we picked up about six-tenths of a second, which is great."

The finicky nature of NASCAR's new car is nothing compared to what Kenseth and Blickensderfer have experienced. They won the Daytona 500 in their first race together and followed it up with a second victory; but then blew up after just six laps of the season's third race. Three more heartaches in quick succession knocked the No. 17 team from first to 12th in the drivers' standings, 255 points behind.

That makes focusing on the big picture critical, and it's why, when Kenseth was mired in 34th after pre-qualifying practice; neither Kenseth nor Blickensderfer were worried.

"We don't put too much emphasis on practice and qualifying," Blickensderfer said. "Matt says he's better if he just goes out there and runs a lap [in qualifying] than if we spend the whole time practicing it. We unloaded fairly good, which was good for us and we haven't done lately, and we got to change four or five things that we wanted to try for tomorrow, so we had a good game plan."

"In practice, our big thing was the car ran pretty good in longer runs -- we just didn't have any speed," Kenseth said. "I don't know why, but we just couldn't get any speed out of it. But the changes we made seemed to make the car quite a bit better." (Continued)