Martinsville, Va. — There were two races in this season’s closing stages that had the attention of Matt Kenseth and his Robbie Reiser-led crew as they work towards capturing the 2003 NASCAR Winston Cup championship — Talladega Superspeedway and Martinsville Speedway.
The Wisconsin driver’s fear of things-that-can-make-for-a-long-weekend turned out to be spot on at Talladega, where he finished 33rd after the engine blew in his DeWalt Ford. But the Martinsville track treated Kenseth as gently as possible given the totally unpredictable nature of this tight short track with 43 full-bodied cars racing.
Kenseth took a stealth approach to the final short track event of the year and brought his Taurus home 13th, and gave up only 27 championship points on a track where the loss of a 100 points or more was entirely possible.
"[Martinsville] doesn't bother me,” Kenseth said giving his position regarding this half-mile track. “It's just really small and tight and with the way they give all of the laps back now, at any time there can be 30-some cars on the lead lap.
“If you make the wrong strategy call or pit at the wrong time or anything happens, you can go from the Top 10 to 35th so that makes it tough to figure out what to do."
The Winston Cup point leader appeared to be well on his way to a disappointing day when he was buried deep in the pack at a time that his closest pursuer for the championship, Kevin Harvick, was leading the race. But after 500 laps were completed Kenseth made up a lot of his deficit, just as Harvick was doing his best to make up his lost ground.
"When I was way in the back - when I pitted that one time kind of by accident and got mixed up - it was really bad,” admitted the Roush Racing driver. “It was hard racing back there, but once I got up to about 15th and could find a spot to kind of ride until we got more towards the end of the race it wasn't too bad.
“This place is fun when you've got a really good handling car. When you're off a little bit, it's a handful.
"We knew this was our weakest point coming up the rest of the year,” added Kenseth as he looked forward to the final four events of the 2003 season. “Two out of the last four tracks we have coming up we've won at before. Homestead is new for everyone and Atlanta is probably one of my favorite tracks to go to, so I'm feeling good and I'm ready to go."
Posting the most exciting finish of the day — Dale Jarrett, who spun his way from a 39th provisional starting spot to a 11th place finish in the Subway 500. It was a long and interesting day as Jarrett spun twice during the event. But the driver of the UPS Ford and his crew chief, Shawn Parker, worked the race to the fullest of their capabilities and dragged a respectable 11th finish out of what could have been a dreadful day.
“I thought we'd have a hard time running in the Top 20,” Jarrett said after the event. “We just struggled with this car. It was my fault for wrecking on Friday and this car we had as a backup was nowhere close to a short track car, but we just tried to make the most of it.
“Shawn and those guys did a good job of coming up with ideas,” Jarrett continued. “We fought something that was really hard to fix, especially in the race. We would get tight in the center and loose off the corner, so they really had to make a couple adjustments at a time.
“Then I got spun out once and we got that lap back. Then I spun out on my own the next time trying to weave through some traffic back there and got into Turn 3 too hard. It was just an interesting day, but we were able to have a good enough car on old tires that we could stay out there towards the end and that worked in our favor.
“If I hadn't spun the second time, I think we had ourselves in a really good spot to try to make a Top-10 out of it, but we came close. I'm pretty happy."
Jeff Burton delivered best in class for the Oval at Martinsville. Burton looked as though he had a Top-5 car for most of the day but a late race fade stole those hopes and replaced them with the reality of a 10th place finish.
"It's a wild race,” offered Burton regarding a typical Martinsville event. “Everybody is doing what they've got to do and that's what you do. It's short track racing. Everybody is running hard. Everybody is racing hard. There's a lot of rubbing and a lot of beating. Nobody around me just intentionally wrecked anybody or did anything stupid. I'm sure some of that happened, but I never saw it.
“I thought it was pretty clean as far as Martinsville goes."
