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Matt Kenseth went from trying to save his race car to battling for – and getting – a
victory in Saturday’s O’Reilly 300 at Texas Motor Speedway.Before winning for the second time in Busch Series competition this season, Kenseth had to keep from slapping the wall when he blew a tire just 54 laps into the 200-lap race. “I heard something break, I guess it was the tire popping,” Kenseth said. “My first thought was, ‘I hope I don’t hit anything.’ Because of all the dumb stuff I’ve done before, I guess, I was able to figure out how not to hit the wall. …It was a lot of uck, too.” Kenseth’s spin did bring out a yellow, but his crew fixed the car and Kenseth got his lap back on a subsequent caution. From there, he soldiered on until things broke his way when Regan Smith’s crash on Lap 124 brought out a caution during a round of green-flag stops. Kyle Busch had dominated the race to that point, but Busch had been in for a stop under the green and Smith’s wreck caught him almost a full lap down. Kenseth, though, hadn’t pitted and lined up 10th for the restart. By a restart with 35 laps left in the race, Kenseth was up to fourth. He worked past David Ragan, then had to battle Carl Edwards door-to-door as they went by Mears on the way to challenge Denny Hamlin for first. Kenseth took second on Lap 192. Edwards fell away but Kenseth kept coming, and on Lap 192 he got a huge run off Turn 2 and zipped past Hamlin on the backstretch. “When we were out front it was on the edge of spinning out, and it finally caught up with us,” Hamlin said. “I just got loose right there and opened the door. I just gave this one away.” Hamlin didn’t roll over after Kenseth got by him, however. With Kenseth running a slightly higher line, Hamlin got his nose under Kenseth’s car in the turns several times over the final laps but never was able to complete the pass. “He was going to have to make a mistake for us to get back by him,” Hamlin said. Kenseth said he was at least a little concerned about Hamlin on the last lap. “I wanted to go high enough where I was going to get a good run of the corner and enough momentum to get to the finish line,” he said. Edwards, who has finished sixth or better in every Busch Series race so far this year, wound up third and now leads the series standings by 403 points over Dave Blaney. Mears wound up fourth. Rookie David Ragan, who started on the pole, finished fifth. Busch, who has led in every Busch race this year but is yet to win, was seventh. |
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