KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Matt Kenseth led just three laps of Saturday’s GoBowling 400 at Kansas Speedway, but the No. 20 spent much of the night knocking on the door.
After two late restarts and a four-car crash that Kenseth’s Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota avoided, he finished fourth behind winner Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch, respectively.
A fourth-place finish is Kenseth’s best mark of the season — a season sprinkled with bad luck and simply bizarre circumstances at times.
“You always want the finishes,” Kenseth said after the Saturday night race. “We’ve run up front, terrible finishes. A lot of races we haven’t even finished this year. So you always want to get the finish.
“I felt like we ran better than all three cars that finished in front of us so that part I guess is a little bit disappointing. The 78 ( Martin Truex Jr. ) had us covered but those other guys I felt like after 10 laps we were probably better than they were. Still didn’t quite get the finish.”
Martin Truex Jr. and the No. 78 team know about bad luck. After dominating much of the race and leading 172 laps, a tire problem sent the Furniture Row Racing Toyota down pit road for an unscheduled stop that put them a lap down.
“I don’t know what the racing gods have against me,” Truex radioed to his team after coming on Lap 216 in to fix a vibration after something got jammed up in a wheel.
“Did everyone search their souls and figure out who’s livin’ wrong?” Truex’s team radioed on a subsequent caution as Truex fought to a 14th-place finish.
Kenseth has seen his share of rotten luck this season, but despite race-ending crashes at Las Vegas and Talladega and a tangled black-flag situation at Atlanta — where he had dominated before a pit road violation and communication mixup — Kenseth doesn’t feel like dark forces are to blame.
“All our problems we’ve had all year haven’t necessarily been luck,” Kenseth said. “I feel like everybody did a good job tonight. We executed everything good. We just weren’t quite fast enough and weren’t quite in the right positions. We got a decent finish so that was good.”
Kenseth comes out of Kansas up one place in the drivers point standings to 14th, 121 points behind series leader Harvick.
Kenny Bruce contributed to this report.