BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Las Vegas — Matt Kenseth’s work was cut out for him today as he guided his No. 17 DeWalt Taurus to victory against the GM forces, led by Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and a cameo appearance by Michael Waltrip, fending off an industry analysts expected Chevy route in the Las Vegas 400.

But adjustments and a thinning of the GM powerbrokers opened the door for Kenseth to take the lead just after the fifth caution of the day. Once on point Kenseth was able to build a respectable lead ahead of his rivals in the 267-lap event.

The only hurdle Kenseth would have to overcome was one final visit to Las Vegas Motor Speedway’s pit road, which came at lap 237. The choices that the Robbie Riser-led crew faced for that stop included whether to take two or four tires. Experience said that four was the wiser choice, and just more than 13 seconds later Kenseth was out of his pit stall and returning to the track to put away his first win of the year, his career seventh — keeping Roush Racing’s stronghold on this 1.5-mile track.

"One of the guys that goes over the wall changing tires has never changed tires in any division over the wall in his life,” began Kenseth regarding his revamped pit crew. “He's carried tires, but he's never changed tires. So to do that and today to do it on a championship level and throw those people together is just a huge testament to how hard all our guys work and how organized Robbie and Jack and everybody at Roush Racing has our team.

“The will and desire for those guys to win and how hard they work makes me so proud of my team. I don't know how to explain it."

With four new tires and fuel Kenseth drove to a victory while the crowd waited more than nine seconds before second place finisher Earnhardt Jr. crossed the line. The balance of the Top-5 showed all Bowties as Michael Waltrip, Bobby Labonte and Tony Stewart swept the remaining spots.

“This is the first race track that I'm aware of that the Chevrolets and the Pontiacs had tested at,” commented Roush about the parity puzzle that’s still coming together after the introduction of two new cars and aero matched bodies this season. “They had not tested at Rockingham, so the way they ran [last week] wasn't an indication of what they were going to do. But it sure looked to me, based on the way they qualified and the way they practiced, that it was going to be a route by the new cars.

“We've got a 1998 Taurus here that we're racing against these new cars and I thought we wouldn't do well with it, but Robbie and Matt have got just a terrific setup in that car,” added Roush. “I think the way the [No] 99 ran is more like I'm afraid we'll see the good Fords run in the near term on short tracks."

The only other Ford driver to finish in the Top-10, Jeff Burton, said, “That was a good run for us. I'm not disappointed with the run at all. We were better than the [No.] 17 for most of the day, but they got their car a little better and got track position. We lost track position and never seemed to get our car better, so we're in the ballpark - now all we have to do it knock it out of there."

The win by Roush brings the score to four for Roush and two for all other comers. Mark Martin took the inaugural event, when the Taurus was first introduced in ‘98. Burton then swept the following two years; and Kenseth has reestablished Roush Racing as the alpha dog of LVMS.

“The guys are really good at adapting to new race tracks,” commented car owner Roush about his drivers’ dominance. “This is a race track we've only been able to come to once a year, so I think most drivers don't have a good book on what the race track requires. I think our guys are a little better than average on the new situation, plus I figured when we got here this time that everybody would have good enough information.”

PFIZER CAR GOES DOWN
Coming into today’s Las Vegas 400, Mark Martin was the only driver who could say he’d run every lap that Winston Cup had scheduled in the previous five editions at the venue. Unfortunately, that’s a stat that Martin can no longer claim after the motor in his Pfizer Ford rolled over early in the event.

Martin, who didn’t have a lot to brag about sans motor problems, had zero warning that trouble was boiling under the hood of his Taurus.

"I think we lost a bearing or broke a rod or a crankshaft,” Martin said after rolling back to the garage. “It just went all at once."

"We got lucky last year and didn't break a lot of engines,” Martin added. “Maybe we'll get lucky this year and only have one."

THESE ARE THE DAYS …
Team owner Robert Yates summed up the frustration of his day. "This is why you have to have a good cast-iron stomach to do this for a living."

Yates, just off a strong week at Rockingham where not only Dale Jarrett won, but Elliott Sadler finished ninth, saw one of his cars expire early due to engine failure and the other destroyed in a wreck that some considered an unavoidable incident.

While Jarrett’s hit took him from the race, the first hit, when the motor in Sadler’s M&M’s Ford let go on lap 124, was the hardest for Yates.

"I think something let go in the drive line, I'm not real sure,” he said before a full postmortem was completed on his Yates-prepared rocket. “They're looking at it right now just to see.

“We had great horsepower, it was pretty awesome. We had a good race car. Man, the first three races we've just had some bad luck. We've had some fast races, but just some bad luck. We're looking forward to getting the monkey off our back and see if we can turn things around."

The other Yates’ car was totaled when Steve Park slid up the track out of his lane coming out of Turn 2. Park’s car caught D.J.’s rear bumper and sent the No. 88 UPS Ford backing into the wall hard enough to squirt the left rear spring down across the track.

"I'm pissed off, to be quite honest,” said Jarrett, who waited on the track to let the sometimes-wobbly driver know who was No. 1. “You've got the same people doing stupid stuff back there and there's no reason for that.

“I was sitting there running my race and working on the car, and you've got people out there that I don't know where they're going,” added the disgusted driver who was running in the Top-10 at the time of the wreck. “Unfortunately, it's some of the same people that do it [all the time]. It's just a bad day."