{"id":17768,"date":"2018-05-25T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T17:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=17768"},"modified":"2018-05-25T21:13:52","modified_gmt":"2018-05-26T02:13:52","slug":"kenseth-tempers-expectations-in-return-to-charlotte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/05\/25\/kenseth-tempers-expectations-in-return-to-charlotte\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenseth tempers expectations in return to Charlotte"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Matt Kenseth<\/strong> hoisted his very first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup<\/a> trophy at Charlotte Motor Speedway<\/strong> following the 2000 Coca-Cola 600<\/strong>. It\u2019s been 18 years, a series championship and 38 more wins since that time, but Kenseth is hopeful the longtime good vibe here will be a positive sign of things to come in Sunday night\u2019s running of the race.<\/p>\n

\"\"

#6: Matt Kenseth, Roush Fenway Racing, Ford Fusion Wyndham Rewards<\/p><\/div>\n

Kenseth rejoined the Roush-Fenway Racing Ford team this month after five seasons driving a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. Kenseth, however, was driving for the newly-selected NASCAR Hall of Famer Jack Roush when he won at Charlotte those years ago (once in the 600 and once in the Fall 500). He was hired by the team again to help in re-energizing and re-focusing the storied organization.<\/p>\n

The veteran is driving a part-time schedule, sharing time in the No. 6 Ford Fusion with Trevor Bayne. This weekend\u2019s start will be only his second points race of the 2018 season. He started 35th and finished 36th at Kansas Speedway two weeks. He won the pole position for last week\u2019s Monster Energy All-Star race at Charlotte and finished 14th in the non-points event.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/MENCS_MediaAvail_Kenseth_052418.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not very far into this year,\u201d Kenseth cautioned anyone bringing too-lofty expectations to the 600 weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cKansas was a struggle the whole weekend. Last weekend was very unique, running restrictor plates and all that stuff at Charlotte and the All-Star format and stuff, so that was kind of different.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad to be able to get on the track and get a full practice in (at Charlotte).  \u2026 I feel like we learned a couple things today so far and hopefully we can get qualified respectable and then get back to work Saturday on race trim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kenseth\u2019s return has been a steep and immediate learning curve, back in the driver\u2019s seat after an 11-week season-opening sabbatical. He was immediately challenged with two radically different refreshers in the 1.5-mile Kansas track and then the unique restrictor plate, special format of the All-Star race.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s 600-miler should give him plenty of opportunity to find his groove and truly start to work on the greater task he\u2019s accepted \u2013 helping the Roush team regain the prominence it had when Kenseth won a Cup championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s still pretty new and there\u2019s a lot of different things to try to work through, at least, what I\u2019d like to work through and just trying to keep getting a better feel for it every week and kind of try to give my opinions, for what their worth,\u201d Kenseth said. \u201cWhat I feel like we could do different and better and what we\u2019re doing good. It\u2019s that type of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The No. 6 team has only four top-five finishes in the last four seasons and is eager to see if a change in the driver lineup can boost the competitive flair. Kenseth qualified 17th Thursday night. And he comes into the race ranked among the top-five in all major statistical categories at Charlotte, from average finish (13.577 \u2013 fifth best) to driver rating (96.1 – fourth best).<\/p>\n

And in addition to his winning resume here (two wins and two pole positions), Kenseth also has victories at both of the next two tracks where he\u2019s scheduled to compete  – at Pocono, Pa. (one win) and at Michigan (three wins).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of time to train the last six months, so I\u2019m not worried about the physical aspect of it,\u201d Kenseth said. \u201cI\u2019m more worried about trying to keep up, get our cars a little faster so we can first of all stay on the lead lap, second of all, hopefully start moving forward and getting kind of in the mix and start to go get forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Matt Kenseth hoisted his very first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup trophy at Charlotte Motor Speedway following the 2000 Coca-Cola 600. It\u2019s been 18 years, a series championship and 38 more wins since that time, but Kenseth is hopeful the longtime good vibe here will be a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[233,245,224,16],"class_list":["post-17768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-charlotte-motor-speedway","tag-coca-cola-600","tag-matt-kenseth","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Kenseth-2018Salutes-CMS.jpg?fit=4000%2C2662","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-4CA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17768"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17772,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17768\/revisions\/17772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}