Rookie Kenseth is not satisfied with third place

Monday, May 1, 2000 | 10:26 a.m.

FONTANA, Calif. -- Matt Kenseth had his best day as a NASCAR Winston Cup rookie, but you wouldn't have known it by his demeanor after his third-place finish in Sunday's NAPA Auto Parts 500 at California Speedway.

Although Kenseth led the most laps and dominated much of the last half of the race in his DeWalt Tools Ford, the 28-year-old said he felt like he let his first Winston Cup victory slip away.

"To finish third is great and I'm real proud of the team and I'm real happy with what we did, but it's not my goal to run third," Kenseth said.

"I want to win races. If we would have struggled from the back, run third or fourth or second all day and finished third, I can take that. But when you lead almost the entire race and dominate the whole last half of the race and have the thing wrapped up and then lose the race at the end like that, that's a tough one to swallow."

Kenseth led four times for 119 laps, but lost the lead with 30 laps remaining when he and crew chief Robbie Reiser elected to take on four new tires during a caution period when most of the other front-runners took on only two.

Kenseth came out of the pits in sixth place -- and behind several lapped cars -- and was unable to catch eventual race winner Jeremy Mayfield or runner-up Bobby Labonte in the closing laps.

"I told Robbie this morning that I wanted to put four tires on it all day, every time we stopped," Kenseth said. "When you have a car that runs as good as that does and it's a 500-mile race and we get long green flag (runs), there's no reason to gamble with two tires.

"I probably should have thought about that strategy again ... because it was tough for anybody to pass me if I was in front. We never even talked about taking two tires -- it wasn't even a consideration. If he would have brought it up at the time, I probably would have shot it down."

Kenseth, who scored his third top-10 finish in 10 races and climbed from 19th to 16th in the points, said he isn't completely satisfied with the start to this rookie season.

"I'm not displeased, it's just not exactly where we want to be," Kenseth said. "Robbie and I have big plans and it's not to be 18th in the points. We've had certain problems (but) we've showed flashes of brilliance and we've run pretty good at times ... but we just haven't had the whole package from the time we rolled into the race track to the time we left.

"This weekend was the first weekend that I felt like we were totally prepared."

* NICE RUN: Bobby Labonte made the strongest charge of the race, finishing second to Mayfield after qualifying 36th for Sunday's race.

"We struggled to make the field in 36th (and) we just had a good run all day," said Labonte, who overtook Mark Martin for the Winston Cup points lead. "We're just real excited that we were able to take a bad start to a weekend and finish up good because you always have a doubt in your mind if you can do that or not.

"We made some changes (on the car's setup) this morning. We kind of had a hit-or-miss program today and we hit on it."

With his seventh top-10 finish this season, Labonte leads Martin by 20 points after 10 races.

* HOT LAPS: Jeff Burton, who won the rain-shortened CarsDirect.com 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March, posted his seventh top-10 finish of the season with a fifth-place showing. ... Ricky Rudd finished fourth and scored his third top-10 finish of the year. ... Tony Stewart, the 1999 Winston Cup Rookie of the Year, has not led a lap in any of the first 10 races this season. Stewart finished 10th in the NAPA Auto Parts 500. ... Mark Martin, who finished 14th, is the only driver on the circuit who has placed in the top 20 in all 10 races in 2000.