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Matt
Kenseth burns up the tires after getting his fourth win of the season
Sunday in Kentucky.
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Kenseth wins action packed Quaker State 400
nascar.com
SPARTA, Ky. -- About the only thing that could cast a cloud over Matt
Kenseth's fourth victory of the season was the hard hit Joe Gibbs
Racing teammate Denny Hamlin suffered in Sunday's Quaker State 400 at
Kentucky Speedway, a race postponed from Saturday because of rain.
But Hamlin recovered quickly, and Kenseth had cause to celebrate after
the driver of the No. 20 Toyota took advantage of a spin by the race's
dominant car -- Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet -- after a restart on
Lap 247 of 267.
Kenseth, who got the lead by taking no tires during a pit stop on Lap
242, collected the 28th victory of his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career.
On Sunday, intermittent clouds and sunshine replaced the persistent
rain that had forced postponement of the 17th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
race of the season from Saturday night to noon the next day — and
radically changed the handling characteristics of cars that had been
set up for a night race and impounded since qualifying on Friday.
But it didn't prevent crew chief Jason Ratcliff's call to forego tires
on the last pit stop from succeeding. Kenseth conceded afterward that
it was the percentage play.
"I thought in my head we had about a five percent chance of winning, if
something didn't happen to the 48," Kenseth said. "But, if we would
have got two tires and came out behind the 48, unless he broke, I
thought we had almost a zero percent chance of winning."
"When you look at it like that, it was a great call.
Circumstances helped a little bit to have the quick restarts,
everybody's got their rights (right-side tires), and then we had
another caution (for Johnson's spin), and that gave us some time to
cool our tires back down and definitely got rolling faster in that
second restart.
"So I mean, obviously you look back right now, it's a great call. It
was the only one that gave us a chance to win the race."
Runner-up Jamie McMurray was closing on Kenseth in the final laps but
ran out of time. Clint Bowyer ran third, followed by Joey Logano and
Kyle Busch. Johnson, the series leader, rallied to finish ninth and
extended his standings lead to 38 points over Carl Edwards.
For the rest of this story and more, click here
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