RICHMOND, Va. -- Whether Matt Kenseth's 2009 season hit rock bottom Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway won't be known for 10 more weeks.

But it's a fact that Kenseth's 27th-place finish in the Chevy Rock & Roll 400 knocked him out of the 12-man Chase for the first time in its six-year run.

“

Really, since California it's been a downhill slide for us. We've slowly fell back in the points every week, so I can't say I'm very surprised we didn't make it. I'm really disappointed we didn't make it, but we just didn't perform good enough.

”

-- MATT KENSETH

Neither Kenseth, the 2003 Cup champion in the final episode of the year-long championship format, nor his team ever came to grips with his No. 17 Ford's handling. And as a result Kenseth fell from 12th coming into Richmond -- 20 points ahead of 13th place Brian Vickers -- to 14th, two positions and 38 points behind Vickers, who was in the top 10 most of the night and ended up seventh.

"The first thing we've got to do is look at what we can do better to get our cars back in competitive form," Kenseth said. "We've got to get our cars to run and we've got to get more consistent on pit road -- but the main thing is getting the cars to run, because they're not very competitive.

"We've been working on it hard, we're just weak in a few areas. We've just been off and we haven't got it much better. On a perfect day when everything goes right, we can run about 15th, and that's just not going to cut it."

Kenseth's night on his in-car radio alternated between sarcastic barbs, such as "we've got it so jacked out of shape I can't even drive it," before moving into calm, precise analysis of what his car was doing.

But nothing he and crew chief Drew Blickensderfer tried did much to help. On the last couple restarts, when Kenseth needed to come forward, he fell back, never getting farther forward than 23rd and falling as much as two laps behind eventual race winner Denny Hamlin.

"We just struggled a lot," Kenseth said. "We had two different opportunities where if we could've had a good [pit] stop, like Dale Earnhardt Jr. did to get his lap back, we could've got our lap back and maybe got in there.

"But to be honest with you, wherever Brian and Kyle [Busch, fifth place] ran, we couldn't have ran there anyway so even if we got our lap back we were going to run 18th or 20th. We just didn't have the car to get it done."

Given that, the seeming inevitability of Kenseth falling out of the Chase didn't ease his frustration in the least.

"It's still frustrating, but I've been frustrated for three months," Kenseth said. "There's probably more stress not being in [the Chase]. The top 12 is a really good field right now and any of those guys have got a chance. But even if we'd made it in -- you guys watch us every week and you know we're not championship material right now anyways."

As bad as Kenseth had claimed his cars have run since early this season, most of the night at Richmond he was tantalizingly close to getting into the Chase field. But in the end, Vickers was just too good, and whatever's been wrong with Kenseth's cars most of the year -- it wouldn't turn in the center of the corners Saturday night -- too insurmountable.

Kenseth would've had to improve his 20-race career average Richmond finish, 17.2, by four spots to beat Vickers, who finished seventh. But the fact is, in six Richmond races with the new car, Kenseth's average finish is 23.5, a mark he reached only once Saturday night after starting 28th.

“

I think we really need to look hard into our engineering and some of the stuff we're doing to make these cars run, to start with. And on the 17 we need a little work, too. We've been inconsistent on pit road. I've been inconsistent. I missed the pit box [Saturday].

”

-- MATT KENSETH

"Honestly, we did approach it like any other race -- this is about how we ran the last four Richmond races," Kenseth said. "We just haven't been competitive."

But Saturday night's outcome was still shocking for Kenseth -- who won the season's first two races, at Daytona and California -- but emphasized what he said was a general malaise among Roush Fenway Racing's five Cup teams.

"Really, since California it's been a downhill slide for us," Kenseth said. "We've slowly fell back in the points every week, so I can't say I'm very surprised we didn't make it. I'm really disappointed we didn't make it, but we just didn't perform good enough.

"Yeah, there were some mistakes here and there, and there were some points left on the table, but you can say that every year. Basically, we didn't perform good enough -- we didn't run good enough to be in and the way we ran the last three months we didn't really deserve to be in there.

"We need to figure out why because none of our cars really run the way they should. I wish we weren't in this spot, but we did the best we could and we'll try again next week."

Kenseth, however, said not to expect a drastic change in performance while claiming his team could still fix things in its current configuration.

"I thought we'd been working on [improving the team] all year," Kenseth said with a laugh. "I don't think it's going to be any different [in the Chase], but maybe Jack [Roush, team owner] and Robbie [Reiser, competition director] got surprises for us with the team. I don't really know and I hope they don't dismantle our team.

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"I'm not really sure [what we can do]. We're always trying to get better; we just haven't been able to do it. We're missing something, in my opinion, with this organization to start with to make all of our cars faster because Carl [Edwards] hasn't won a race all year and he won nine of them last year.

"I think we really need to look hard into our engineering and some of the stuff we're doing to make these cars run, to start with. And on the 17 we need a little work, too. We've been inconsistent on pit road. I've been inconsistent. I missed the pit box [Saturday]."

After putting three drivers into the Chase last year, Roush Fenway is left with Edwards seeded ninth and Greg Biffle seeded 12th -- neither of whom has won a race after Edwards led the league in victories in 2008. Kenseth wasn't the only one baffled following 400 laps at Richmond.

"We thought this front suspension package we tried here was going to be the deal and it wasn't," Biffle said after finishing 14th, the race's best Roush Fenway car. "I think every [Roush Fenway] team here had it. I don't know if we ran any better or worse than we would have, but we're going to continue to work on it -- that's all I can say.

"We've been testing down in Florida a little bit, and I mean, it wasn't like some revolutionary thing. It was just a little bit different package than we've been running. I definitely don't think it was worse, but it wasn't like a miracle fix, you know? But I think every team had a version of it."