Kenseth

I'm writing this on Monday afternoon and my adrenaline is still flowing from the wild race we had Sunday. Of course it all got started in the fourth lap when Ryan Newman cut down a tire that resulted in damage to 27 out of the 43 cars in the field. The No. 17 DeWalt Ford was one of them as we suffered quite a bit of cosmetic damage to the right front of our car and the toe in, which is the front end alignment of the front wheels.

Several other strong cars also suffered damage but were also able to stay on the lead lap after the big wreck including Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart and Greg Biffle.

As so much of your ability to run fast at superspeedways such as Talladega depends upon aerodynamics, usually even slight damage to your car will severally affect your ability to run up front. Therefore, we were very surprised to learn that in the draft our car still had a lot of speed in it.

As a result of several cautions that came out either as a result of later wrecks or debris on the track from the numerous damaged cars losing parts of their bodies during the race, long runs and frequent green-flag pit stops as a result of the smaller fuel cells never played a roll in the race. Therefore, we made it a priority to stay in the draft and as close to the front as possible to avoid any further wrecks.

As the laps kept winding down, things kept getting more exciting. The cosmetic damage to my car will back this up. With about 15 to go, Junior and I hooked up and started drafting our way to the front. Well, it was more like Junior pushing me to the front as in the process he almost took off the back end of my car.

	Kenseth still leads the points race.

With four laps to go we were sitting in fourth with Junior still on my rear and I decided to make my move to the front. With Junior drafting behind me we were able to blow by the lead cars and get out front with three to go, but that was short-lived because as we got out into clear air, the DeWalt Ford was not strong enough to stay up in front and we were quickly passed. In the process, I must have been bumped at least three different times and barely was able to save our car when Ricky Craven got up into me.

When this occurred, luckily Jimmie Johnson was able to go high, which allowed me to hang on to the car. In the resulting scuffle to the finish, we were able to hang on to a ninth-place finish as a result of not having a drafting partner the last two laps. We could have settled for second or third, but the racer in me always wants to go for the win.

You will never win by following the leader so my decision to go for it probably cost us a couple of spots. Considering that we had a poor qualifying run, were slow in all of the practices and suffered damage to our right front during the start of the race, we really can't complain about a ninth-place finish and keeping our consistent streak of top-10 finishes going.

We head to Martinsville this weekend. Of course on short tracks, track position is crucial so we really need to stay up front. We need to qualify better this weekend at Martinsville. It is important to stay up front and out of trouble. Hopefully we can get qualified good and have another solid run.

I look forward to checking back in shortly.

Matt

Matt Kenseth driver diary.
Visit Kenseth's Web site at www.mattkensethstore.com

Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 DeWalt Ford, is providing a diary to ESPN.com throughout the Winston Cup season.