Matt Kenseth took a hard fought victory last night at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to secure his place in the next round of the Chase that he would later describe as unbelievable.
Throughout most of the race it was looking like Kevin Harvick had everything under control, that was until he ran out of fuel and Kenseth was there to pick up the pieces. “We had to be there to win” said Kenseth. “We didn’t pit that one time and I was like, ‘Ahhh,’ and Jason (Ratcliff, crew chief) was like, ‘It’s fine, relax.’ We made it to the front faster than we thought.
“I was giving it everything I’ve got and I thought he (Kevin Harvick) was going to beat us and he had a better car today, but I guess he was a little short on fuel. This is unbelievable. This feels unbelievable.”
Asked how it felt to be through to the second round of the Chase, Kenseth commented “Last time we were here, we didn’t win again for 50 races so I hope that doesn’t happen again. It feels great to win here, a lot of great race fans here at New Hampshire.”
While Kenseth doesn’t need to worry too much about his result at the next race in Dover he remains focused, “It’s funny, it doesn’t change. I thought about it a little bit today and we were running second to Kevin (Harvick) and third behind Denny (Hamlin) and I’m like, ‘Well, this is first round and if you get all top-10s then you’re going to advance.
“Then I’m like, ‘Forget that, you have to work and try to catch them and beat them.’ These things are just too hard to win. We’ll go there and bring our good stuff and try to run as good as we can next week and go on from there.”
Kenseth added “Momentum and all that is a funny thing, it could stop at any given second. You never know what’s going to go wrong so enjoy it while it’s here and we’re enjoying it.”
