Kenseth & Co. turn corner, now look to get even better (cont'd)

Kenseth had the fastest last lap, 24.82 seconds, of any of the 32 cars still running; a reason why race winner Jimmie Johnson said he'd feared Kenseth the most.

"I didn't see him all day long," Johnson said of Kenseth, "and then he showed up at the end and I thought, 'Uh, oh.' "

“

[Sunday] is a step in the right direction. We had really good pit stops. Our car was reasonable, it wasn't blazing fast, and we were able to get a good finish.

”

-- MATT KENSETH

But Kenseth said he had his troubles, despite the quality of his finish.

"The tire blackened the track up, but for whatever reason it made it really, really difficult to pass," Kenseth said. "We got most of our track position through pit stops and restarts.

"I kept getting in the proper lane on restarts and my car would run for two laps, and I'd get two or three spots. And you had to do it right there because there weren't many people that could pass very good. So we had a nice, solid day on pit road. And the car was OK, also, and I was able to get a decent finish out of it."

With the way his cars faltered Sunday -- with Carl Edwards finishing 11th and Greg Biffle 13th, leaving them 11th and ninth in the Chase -- had owner Jack Roush morosely striding from pit road into the driver/owner coach lot with just under 30 laps to go.

Edwards, at least, drew some pleasure from his teammate's success.

"Bob [Osborne, crew chief] made good calls, but our mousetrap just wasn't good enough [Sunday]," Edwards said. "Matt was good, so we'll go back and learn from that. It's frustrating, but not as bad as it could've been, you know?"

Kenseth, who's solidly placed himself 13th in points, said his outlook won't change for next weekend at Kansas. He'd been asked what Edwards could do to get into contention.

"Everybody at Roush Fenway is working really hard to get the cars better, to be competitive. We got behind a little, and we're working hard to get that back.

"So I'd like to say [Sunday] is a step in the right direction. We had really good pit stops. Our car was reasonable, it wasn't blazing fast, and we were able to get a good finish."

Blickensderfer, who looked as if he'd had a three-ton weight removed from his young shoulders as he strode away from his hauler with RFR general manager Robbie Reiser, engineer Chip Bolin and engineering head Chris Andrews, was optimistic as he looked ahead to Kansas.

"Probably a lot better because at Michigan, one of the last bigger tracks we had, we ran pretty good," Blickensderfer said. "We ran up to the lead and we ran with [Johnson] and the 5 [championship leader Mark Martin], which a lot of the people haven't been able to do a lot of the year.

"We had to save fuel at the end [while running in the top five], so that hurt us a little bit [finishing 14th]. But we had a good direction at Michigan and similar lines to what we had in the car this week, so obviously we're looking forward to going to Kansas."