NASCAR Cup

Charlotte: Matt Kenseth press conference

MATT KENSETH --17-- DEWALT Power Tools Taurus (Finished 2nd): IS THERE ANY YOU COULD HAVE CHANGED THAT RESULT? "Not really. The problem was my car was pretty good. When we were single-file my car was pretty good and I think I could have made a ...

Published: May 27, 2002, 3:15 PM

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MATT KENSETH --17-- DEWALT Power Tools Taurus (Finished 2nd):

IS THERE ANY YOU COULD HAVE CHANGED THAT RESULT?

"Not really. The problem was my car was pretty good. When we were single-file my car was pretty good and I think I could have made a move on him. We caught that lap traffic so much faster than I anticipated and we were two and three-wide and all over the place, and they were side-by-side. I almost spun out two or three times the last three laps trying to get around those lapped cars."

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN MARK MARTIN DRIVE LIKE THAT?

"I knew he wasn't gonna let me win, especially with me behind him. I knew he didn't want me to beat him. It was a lot of fun racing with him. He was in the gas. He always is, but he needs the car to do it, obviously. It was a lot of fun chasing him down. I sure would have liked to have gotten alongside of him and raced him side-by-side to the end, but it was still fun to put a little pressure on him and scare him a little bit. He was pretty determined to win that race and he told me in victory lane that I was gonna have to spin him out to get by him, so he was gonna be tough."

THIS IS THE FOURTH STRAIGHT YEAR A ROUSH CAR HAS WON THIS RACE. WHAT'S THE SECRET?

"I don't know. I have no idea. Our car was pretty good a lot of times, but the 48 car had us whipped -- it was just circumstances during the race where something happened and he got in the back of the field. That opened the door for Mark to take the win. We usually have pretty good cars at Charlotte and for some reason we seem to run a little bit better at night than we do in the day always."

DID MARK BOBBLE A BIT AT THE END AND DID YOU SEE THAT?

"I felt pretty good when I was catching him. He moved up a couple of times and it looked like he got a little loose getting in and chased it up the hill and I was able to really close on him. One time I was seven or eight car lengths behind him and I was able to make up three or four of them just coming off turn two and then once I got close he made sure he slowed up real early and got it to the bottom and pulled up in front of me again. He took away the lane that I wanted, so he knew what he was doing out there. He was driving real hard. He was a little loose it looked like at the end of the race and I was real loose at the end of the race too and I did everything I could do. We were both hanging on."

-ford racing-

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