Classic NASCAR: Matt Kenseth: Into the Fire: Back When He Was a Young Gun

This story of mine first ran in the February 2004 issue of the now defunct Satellite Direct, An Entertainment Guide to DIRECTV Programming. With Matt on the pole at Darlington, I thought it'd be a good time to run this one:

Trading the Shadows for the Spotlight

He has stealth and style and roars around motor speedways in a two-ton stock car, hugging curves at breathtaking speeds. He was NASCAR's top driver in 2003, earned more than $8 million, and yet you probably wouldn't recognize him if you met him at the mall.

Matt Kenseth, the 2003 Winston Cup Champion, (the final Winston Cup Champion now that Nextel is NASCAR's primary sponsor), is notorious for staying out-of-sight and out-of-mind until the waning laps of a race, when he suddenly emerges from nowhere to pull into contention.

Take the Food City 500 last March, a vintage Kenseth track tale: He qualified 37th and fell back a lap off the pace after his third pit stop. Yet when the three-hour race was over, Kenseth's Ford whizzed across the finish line in second place.

When asked to reveal the secret to his stealthy artistry, how his slow-starting Taurus continually triumphs over dozens of hard-charging Chevys, Pontiacs, and Dodges, Kenseth sheds his trademark quiet-guy veneer and cuts loose.

“If I had a secret to that, I wouldn't tell anybody,” he drawls. “I think if we qualified better and we started fifth, I think we'd run up front the whole race. The way the competition is, and as hard as it is to pass, it just takes us the whole race to get up front.”

Up front is where Kenseth invariably ends up. Though the black and yellow DeWalt No. 17 car screamed into victory lane just once last season, the silent assassin's consistent front-of-the-pack finishes kept Kenseth in the fast lane. He set the modern-day record, leading in points for an astounding 33 consecutive race weeks.

“Up front” also describes Kenseth off-track. He doesn't talk trash; he doesn't give sound-bytes—he just says what he means. The pundits may have had him pegged to win the cup since the spring, but Kenseth never felt he had the championship in the bag.

“In the middle of the year I was reading ‘nobody has had this big a lead and ever blown it,' and that kind of stuff. When you read that, it kind of worries you a little bit, because you don't want to be the guy remembered for messing it up.”

Cleaning up is more like it. Kenseth claimed the Winston Cup trophy with a series-leading 25 top 10 finishes and 11 top fives, netting the soft spoken 31-year-old Wisconsin native a cool $4.25 million bonus to add to his $4 million in race winnings. And he's achieved this phenomenal success virtually unscathed.

Though he's the only NASCAR driver who could qualify for a wrecking insurance policy, Kenseth refuses to blow his own horn when waxing on his crash-avoiding prowess.

“Luck,” he deadpans, pausing a second before diffusing his joke with a chuckle. “No, I really try to base my driving style on Mark Martin [Roush Racing's eldest driver],” Kenseth offers.

“He's really taught me a lot; when to race someone and when not to. There are times in a race when you're running side-by-side with someone and you can either let off and let him go, and pass him later when your car is better, or you can race him as hard as you can and possibly get into each other and end up crashing.

"Sometimes it is luck missing the wrecks, but we definitely try to stay out of trouble as much as we can.”

What distinguishes Kenseth from other sultans of speed is that he may flirt with disaster, but he never kisses her. Critics of Kenseth's subtle speedway form would've rather seen Ryan Newman, who won eight races and finished sixth in the points, take home the big trophy.

But where were these critics in 2002 when Kenseth won the most races (five) yet finished eighth in the points?

What casual NASCAR fans and Kenseth detractors don't get is that Kenseth is a driver's driver. And the first person to congratulate him when he clinched the title with a fourth place finish at the Pop Secret 400 at Rockingham was Ryan Newman.

“[We're] buddies and have been hanging out. He congratulated me and told me ‘good job,'” says Kenseth, now pumped about his prospects for the 2004 inaugural Nextel Cup where he'll seek an upgrade on Newman's compliment.

“I think Ford's going to have a better car and better engines, and I'm excited about getting started. I just want to go out and win more races.”

MATTer of Fact

As a teenage racecar driver blazing around the short-tracks of his home state of Wisconsin, Kenseth was nicknamed “Matt the Brat.”

Matt outgunned hard-charger Dale Earnhardt, Jr. to take the 2000 Raybestos Rookie of the Year Award.

Matt's pit crew, The Killer Bees, won back-to-back world pit crew championships in 2001 and 2002 in Rockingham, NC.

Matt's average finishing position during his 2003 Winston Cup Champion run was 10.25.