Kenseth Manhandles Michigan For The Win

 

By Ron Felix

Despite a record ten caution periods for 36 laps, the GFS Marketplace 400 at Michigan International Speedway on Sunday was by all accounts, a yawner. Yet when it was over some drivers were a little closer to securing a place in the Chase for the Championship and for others it was a dose of reality.

Matt Kenseth first took the lead from Ryan Newman on lap nine and with different pit strategies in play, the field seemed to be continually jumbled with everyone running different scenarios.

Kenseth won his third Nextel Cup race of the year, the other two coming at California Speedway and Dover. It was the 13th career victory for Kenseth in 243 starts. It was the second win for Kenseth at Michigan and 11th victory on a superspeedway. His last victory at Michigan came in June 2002.

"We stayed out and everybody pitted," Kenseth said explaining the early pit strategy; "and then the caution came out again in another seven or eight laps and I think most people would be thinking we’d pit, but we knew we weren’t in our fuel window so he decided to stay out and play it all the way through and it worked out good."

Kenseth led the most laps for the third time in 2006 and the first time since Chicagoland, five races ago. He led six times for 87 laps including the final 32 laps. Kenseth moved into 46th on NASCAR’s all-time winners list tied with Tim Richmond and Dick Rathmann.

This was team owner Jack Roush’s 93rd NASCAR NEXTEL Cup victory. Roush has scored nine NASCAR NEXTEL Cup victories at Michigan. Roush Racing has won at least one race each season 1997-2006, 10 consecutive years.

"The 17 team, the DeWalt team, is championship form," Roush said. "We’ve got an agreement with DeWalt that goes down the road for many years now, real happy about that. I think they’re happy with the results, certainly, that Matt’s been able to do for them what we expected and what they expected. Robbie did a nice job. The 17’s pit crew is by far the best we got. Robbie put that together, he won’t accept anything less than absolute perfection with the guys that go over the wall and change the tires. They had a great car. Robbie has figured out, among all the things in our inventory of aero potential and aero option, he’s figured out what Matt likes, and they were able to close the deal as they were able to twice before.” more on Win Some, Lose Some, Kenseth Best At Michigan