Joe Gibbs Racing driver looks to bounce back from winless season
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Team: Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota
Rank in final 2014 standings: Seventh
Wins: None
Year in photos: Recap Kenseth’s 2014 season
Strides: “Highlight of our season? That’s a tough one because we didn’t win any races,” Kenseth said when asked about 2014 superlatives.
The winner of a career-best seven races after making the move to JGR in 2013, Kenseth and the No. 20 team couldn’t find their way to Victory Lane once the ’14 season got under way. But by the end of the year, Kenseth actually had more top-five (13) and top-10 (22) finishes than he managed the previous year.
He also qualified for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup for the 10th time, advancing through two rounds before being eliminated in the Eliminator Round.
In addition to earning two pole positions, Kenseth posted a career-best second-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Actually, Kenseth wasn’t shut out of Victory Lane entirely — he did collect a checkered flag in the season-ending Nationwide (now XFINITY) Series event at Homestead, and won one of the two qualifying races prior to the Daytona 500.
“Winning the first (Duel) race at Daytona was probably the highlight, going out and feeling like we were going to be pretty competitive there; Denny (Hamlin) won the second one, we won the first one,” Kenseth said. “At the time I didn’t think that would be our highlight, but that was probably one of them.
“We had a lot of solid races but none that really stand out, where I was like ‘Man, that was just an awesome day’ because we didn’t get any wins.”
Setbacks: The lack of wins — it was his first shutout season since 2010 — and a lack of get-to-the-front speed proved to be the team’s undoing. But Kenseth said it wasn’t a single item that held the team back throughout the course of the 36-race season.
Down the stretch, he and his team remained in contention. A third-place finish at Phoenix in the Eliminator Round finale saw him finish just outside the cutoff for advancing to the Championship Round.
“Exceptionally fast” the previous year, Kenseth said “between the aero changes (in ’14) and getting the car down on the track, we just didn’t seem to have a handle on it the way we did the year before. Our balance was just way off and we could never get it fixed the way we wanted it.”
Quoteworthy: “I feel like we did a really good job this year with what we had to work with. None of our cars were near as fast as they were last year.”
What’s next: While expansion and a crew chief shuffle at JGR will have new faces in new places for ’15, Kenseth’s group will have a familiar look. Jason Ratcliff returns for a third season as crew chief, a non-change that Kenseth feels good about.
Kenseth said he’s also looking forward to the the latest changes to the rules package, moves that will take away a bit of horsepower and lessen downforce.
“Hopefully that will make it a little easier to pass in traffic; hopefully it will make the cars a little freer,” he said. “They just had so much spoiler on them last year and were always so tight. I’m hoping that will help. It’s the same for everybody but hopefully it will help.”