RELATED: Full race results | Series standings | Chase Grid
SHOP: Chase gear
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Matt Kenseth put the blame squarely on his own shoulders after his second-place finish Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Kenseth — who led 105 of 300 laps, including from Laps 243-294 — ceded the lead on the final restart to eventual race winner Kevin Harvick. Kenseth held on for second place, .442 seconds behind at the checkered flag, but expressed regret as he emerged from his No. 20 Toyota post-race.
“The last restart was my fault,” said Kenseth, who had his modest win streak at the 1.058-mile track snapped at two. “The one before that I thought I did right and we heard from the (race control) tower down that they thought I slowed up before I restarted or something. So the last one I let Kevin lay back on me, which we’re supposed to be side-by-side.
“I should have known better. I should have just went really late in the (restart) zone and waited until he had to get up to my nose because he anticipated it just right and laid back. Plus, I spun the tires and I got beat through (Turns) 1 and 2 and then it was over.”
The late-race slip-up paralleled a restart miscue by Martin Truex Jr., last week’s winner and the driver of the JGR-affiliated Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota. Truex lost ground with a sluggish jump on the next-to-last restart after leading a race-high 141 laps. He wound up seventh.
Kenseth sits fourth in the 16-driver Chase standings with one race remaining until the Round of 12 is set. A New Hampshire win would have removed any guesswork for the 44-year-old driver ahead of next Sunday’s Citizen Soldier 400 (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Dover International Speedway.
“You always want to win,” Kenseth said. “I thought we had a top-two or -three car today, but we didn’t win. They put me in position to do that and I let them down there so I feel bad about that. We ran good last week and we ran decent today, too, so we’ll just go to Dover and try to race them there.”