Rebuilt for speed

Monday, March 8, 2004 | 10:08 a.m.

Matt Kenseth wasn't about to let his Roush Racing crew throw this car onto the junk heap.

Despite virtually destroying the No. 17 DeWalt Power Tools Ford that he powered to victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last March in a practice crash late last year at Kansas Speedway, Kenseth made his team rebuild the car.

Now he's glad he did.

Kenseth took his rebuilt car and led 123 of the final 173 laps Sunday and won his second consecutive UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 before a crowd estimated at 142,000. It was Kenseth's second consecutive victory of the 2004 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series season.

"They wanted to (throw this car away) and I wouldn't let them," Kenseth, the reigning series champion, said. "That car got annihilated at Kansas -- that car went out and ran one lap of practice and I just killed it.

"It was my favorite racecar and all that was left was half the cage and the middle part of the frame. I said I don't care what's left; I want to fix it because it's my favorite car. Sometimes, when you get a special car, it just feels good to you. When I sit in it, I always feel comfortable in it."

With the victory, Kenseth claimed the lead in the series points standings -- a position he occupied for 35 of the 36 weeks of the 2003 season.

"It surprises me," Kenseth said of his back-to-back victories at North Carolina Speedway and LVMS. "But it surprises me every time I go to Victory Lane, honestly.

"It's just so competitive and so many things go on that I appreciate every one of them and I never really count on it until it's over."

Kenseth, who won his first NASCAR Cup championship last season with only one victory, said he is even more surprised to have dominated the way he has the past two races. Kenseth led 259 of 393 laps at Rockingham and 123 of 267 Sunday.

"It's kind of weird for me the last couple of weeks to lead all those laps, especially in the middle of the race," Kenseth said. "Usually, starting in the back, we don't have a car good enough to get to the front that fast and we usually spend a lot of time back there to get to the front -- and that's the races that we won in the past, before last week and this week.

"It feels weird to be out front that long but it's fun to see everybody in your rear-view mirror."

Kenseth, who started 25th, was third when the race restarted with 61 laps remaining following the sixth caution period. It took Kenseth 18 laps to overtake Tony Stewart for second and another six laps to grab the lead from Kevin Harvick.

Rookie Kasey Kahne, the pole-sitter, made a strong late-race charge in the No. 9 Dodge and finished 3.426 seconds behind Kenseth for his second consecutive runner-up finish of the season. Tony Stewart was third in a Chevrolet, Jamie McMurray fourth in a Dodge and Mark Martin took fifth in a Ford.

"I never expected this," Kahne said of his back-to-back second-place finishes. "To run second in these races is fine with me right now.

"We want to win and we're going to win sometime ... (but) I'm fine with running second right now."

Stewart, who led four times for 45 laps, likewise was happy with his podium finish after a disappointing 26th-place showing two weeks ago at Rockingham.

"When we tested bad here (at LVMS in January) and then had a bad weekend at Rockingham, I was really nervous coming into this weekend," Stewart said. "That's why this race was so important to us to rebound from Rockingham and to answer questions about whether there was something in our package that we're missing or if it was just a bad race at Rockingham.

"I think there is a little weight lifted off the team's shoulders now. It gives us some confidence now that two out of three races we finished in the top three twice and that we just had a weird day at Rockingham."

Las Vegas native Kurt Busch, who started second and led the first four laps, finished ninth. His younger brother, Kyle, completed only 11 laps after hitting the outside wall twice in the first two laps and finished 41st in his Nextel Cup debut. Brendan Gaughan, the third local driver in the field, finished a lap down in 22nd place.

Kenseth's victory, the ninth of his Nextel Cup career, was the fifth by a Roush Racing driver in the seven Nextel Cup races at LVMS. Kenseth joined fellow Roush Racing drivers Mark Martin (1998) and Jeff Burton (1999 and 2000) as Nextel Cup race winners in Las Vegas.

Team owner Jack Roush said that success could be traced to Martin's victory here in the inaugural race.

"We like to go to racetracks where we can attack the racetrack and where you don't have to be real tentative with it and you can go for it," Roush said. "The things that (Mark) has asked for over the years -- this is our 17th year (together) -- and the things that we've built into our program address the problems that you face on this racetrack very well.

"The first time we came here we were able to win; that was great. The first time we went to Texas, a brand new mile-and-a-half racetrack, we were able to win (with Burton). That was based on the strength of Mark's wisdom and his approach to these racetracks that are so similar."

Kenseth won with an average speed of 128.790 mph in a race that was slowed by six cautions periods for 37 laps. Jeff Green and Michael Waltrip were involved in separate accidents but were not injured.