Matt Kenseth Finishes in Fifth Place in Phoenix

Matt Kenseth Finishes in Fifth Place in Phoenix

“Some guys obviously ran better than others. We didn’t handle the best all night. We ran a lot better than I thought we’d run and we were able to get a good finish out of it. So, it was alright.” THIS WAS THE LONGEST TEST FOR THE CAR OF TOMORROW. PLUS, THE RACE STARTED IN DAYLIGHT AND ENDED AT NIGHT. THOUGHTS ON THE COT? “I don’t think everybody likes how they drive, but the fact is we’re all in the same boat, and we’ve all got the same opportunity to make it work, so we’ve just got to figure it out.”

ON THE CLOSE RACING AT THE END. “At the very end we were just too loose and we couldn’t go anywhere. So, we didn’t have the car as good as some of those guys. On a long run we were able to run up, probably, in the top four or five times, so I was real proud of the guys for that. And they did a great job on pit road. We never had bad track position all day and that was really the key to us getting a good finish.”

EVERYBODY SAID THIS WOULD BE THE TRUE TEST FOR THE CAR OF TOMORROW. WHAT DO YOU THINK? “It doesn’t matter what I think. We’ve all got the same thing to work with, we’ve just got to make it work better than the rest. They’re a struggle to drive and to get to turn, but everybody’s kind of in the same boat. We’ve just got to figure it out better than those guys.”

YOU KEEP SAYING THAT YOU’RE NOT HAVING THE BEST OF CARS, BUT YOU KEEP FINISHING NEAR THE FRONT. “I feel like I’ve got an A-plus team. I feel like they do a great job, they really prepare the cars well, we always pit it good, Doug Yates and our engine guys do a great job, we’ve got great reliability on horsepower. It’s just that we haven’t quite hit the combination to make them handle the way we need to here the last few weeks. We’re just going to keep working. These great finishes are really good for us to stay up in points, but we’ve got to just keep working and try to develop the stuff and make it more competitive down the stretch.”

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