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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The last two times NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series has competed at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Matt Kenseth has come away with the win.
In fact, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver has won three of the last six Sprint Cup events at the 1.058-mile track located in Loudon, New Hampshire.
Maybe that makes him one of the favorites heading into this weekend’s race but Kenseth isn’t taking anything for granted. The Bad Boy Off Road 300 (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) is the second race of this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and the second of three in the opening Round of 16.
“You never know until you get there but we ran really well in July,” Kenseth, 44, told NASCAR.com Wednesday. “We ran really well last fall, too. Probably could have run second or third, ended up getting by (teammate) Denny (Hamlin) there at the end and Kevin (Harvick) ran out of gas.
“We’ve had really good cars there since I’ve been (at) JGR. It used to be a track that I sort of dreaded … but the last three years it’s been pretty good.”
Kenseth won twice during the 26-race regular season to qualify for one of the 16 Chase positions but had to rally for a ninth-place finish a week ago in the Chase opener at Chicagoland. Misfortune struck the 2003 series champion twice, leaving him scrambling to regain lost track position.
“I can’t say we weren’t good,” Kenseth said. “We started seventh … we pit under green and the caution came out … and that really got us behind. I had just gotten back to maybe the top 10 again … and I sped on pit road.
“So that put us in the back again. Really we just fought most of the day trying to get back our track position. I really felt like we had a pretty good car … I don’t know why, but for me it was just incredibly hard to pass.”
Kenseth has failed to qualify for only one Chase, in 2009. Six-time series champion Jimmie Johnson is the only active driver with more Chase appearances. But while all of Johnson’s titles have come since the debut of the Chase in ’04, Kenseth has yet to solve the riddle of the 10-race playoff. In the two years the Chase has featured an elimination format, he’s failed to advance to the Championship Four.
“There’s not a magic formula besides beating the rest of the cars because you just don’t know what the others are going to do,” he said. “It’s definitely different. One thing I really learned is that it’s unpredictable. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You’ve got to get that finish every week and not make mistakes.”
While he said he doesn’t feel as if his No. 20 team is running as good or getting the consistent finishes it was at this point a year ago, Kenseth said he’s confident his group will continue to contend.
“I feel like our equipment is just as good or better than it was last year,” he said, “so I feel like we can definitely get it together.”