Matt Kenseth has to be one of the happiest drivers in NASCAR right now.
He currently sits seventh on the Chase Grid – 11 points ahead of Austin Dillon on the cutoff line – and gets to head to New Hampshire Motor Speedway, where he has won the last two races, for Sunday’s Bad Boy Off Road 300 (2 p.m. ET on NBCSN). Following New Hampshire, he’ll travel to Dover – where he won the May race – for the final event of the Chase’s Round of 16.
“It will only help us in the first round if we win at them again, but New Hampshire has been a really good track for us the last few years,” Kenseth said. “Dover has been a little up and down, particularly our performances in the dominating car, and it wasn’t last time either, we were just kind of in the right place at the right time and able to hang on. But that’s a track I really enjoy as well.”
Kenseth has excelled at New Hampshire over his last six starts there, recording three wins, a fourth-place showing, a sixth-place result, and a 21st-place outlier.
“We’ve had really good cars there since I’ve been at Joe Gibbs Racing,” Kenseth said. “It used to be a track that I sort of dreaded … but the last three years it’s been pretty good.”
Kenseth, 44, who won the 2003 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship, explained the key to a second title does not simply entail going to tracks where you’ve seen success.
“There’s a lot of great race teams and drivers in it and we have to figure out how to beat those guys every week,” he said. “It’s a tough task.”
Source: Staff Report / NASCAR Wire Service
