Kenseth trying to recapture magic after fast start to '09

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Matt Kenseth would like nothing more than to leave Daytona International Speedway this time around in the same way he left in February: carrying a very large trophy for the mantle and a big check for the bank. But no matter where he finishes in Saturday night's Coke Zero 400, he'd definitely like to leave the bad luck behind.

"Obviously, winning the 500 was huge for us and really kicked the year off, and we were lucky enough to follow that up at California," Kenseth said Thursday. "Anyway, it's been really up and down since then. We've had some good runs, some bad runs and some not very consistent finishes, so I'm glad to be back here and hopefully we can get our car to handle and be up front and have a shot at it again."

Coming off back-to-back wins on both coasts, Kenseth was the toast of the town. Since blowing an engine on the first lap the following week at Las Vegas, Kenseth's just been toast. And he might even be willing to give a trophy and a check to the first person who can pinpoint the specific reason why everything suddenly unraveled for the No. 17 Ford in 2009.

"We obviously started off real good, and after that it really hasn't been one thing," Kenseth said. "We broke the first lap at Vegas. We broke a part, which is really strange. There's been some races like Talladega where we were second with four laps to go, had ourselves in great position and then got a flat tire from a fender rub. Then we had a loose wheel at Charlotte.

"It hasn't really been one thing. We've just had a lot of things keeping us from getting us our finishes. Now, we haven't really been contenders to win races -- there have been a couple of races where we ran pretty good -- but we haven't been contenders to win races. I think we've been a top-10 car more times than not, but it seems like we keep turning top-10 or top-12 runs into 20th- and 30th-place finishes, from having problems, all kinds of different problems."

And those problems have caused Kenseth to slowly slip down the standings. With nine races before the Chase field is set, Kenseth is a tenuous 10th. Of course, that's not something that's foremost in his mind. He can do the math.

"I don't really pay much attention to that," he said. "Yeah, I'm kind of aware of where we're at. I look at the standings every few weeks or something; somebody will say where you're at. But, if you run good and you finish good, you'll get the points to make it to the Chase.

"Certainly, it's a real big deal to make the Chase, and if you make it, you want to have a legitimate shot at a championship every year. We've been one of them the whole time. But you want to get in, and we used to be really good at taking cars that didn't run that good and get better finishes than what we ran."

Unfortunately for Kenseth and crew chief Drew Blickensderfer, the opposite has been happening with increasing, and alarming, frequency.

"We need at least to get back to finishing where we run, and if we don't do that, we won't make it," Kenseth said. "I think we all realize that. We've got to get running better to start with, but we've certainly got to get finishing better. Like last week [at New Hampshire], we ran 12th all day, which was nothing to be too excited about, and finished 22nd. We've been doing that a lot. Pocono, in third all day and finished 18th or something [16th]. We've got to figure out how to get that to stop. There's no way we're going to make it doing that."

With all this misfortune, you might think the relationship between driver and crew chief might be stretched beyond the breaking point, but Kenseth said that's not the case at all.

'Seriously, it's been really good," Kenseth said. "He's done better, really, than I could've expected. The first two weeks, obviously, we weren't going to continue that pace all year. I knew sooner or later there things were going to settle down [with a] reality check.

"I think he's done really good. I think he's been learning a lot the last few months. When we first started, we just kind of took what we had and he took his time implementing certain things or getting used to the guys and doing all of that stuff. There's a learning curve to all of that and I think he's been doing really good. I think every week it's been getting better."

Even though it seems like it's a different issue every week, Kenseth does know Roush Fenway Racing needs to improve in one major way if it has any hopes of taking home a title when the Sprint Cup Series returns to Florida for the third and final time in November at Homestead.

"For us as an organization, I think we've been off on the short tracks and the flat tracks, places like [New Hampshire], places like Richmond and Phoenix," Kenseth said. "Tracks like that I think we've been off at a little bit performance-wise."

• Sound Off: Matt Kenseth returns with a determined attitude