FORT WORTH, Texas (April 12,2011) – After four runner-up finishes at Texas Motor Speedway since his first victory here in 2002, Matt Kenseth finally sealed the deal with a dominating performance in Saturday night’s Samsung Mobile 500 for his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory in 76 races.
Kenseth led nine times for a racehigh 169 laps that vaulted him past Roush Fenway Racing teammate Greg Biffle (619) to the No. 1 spot for career Sprint Cup Series laps led at Texas Motor Speedway with 669. Kenseth, however, had become accustomed to heartache at Texas Motor Speedway. During last year’s AAA Texas 500, a late-race pass by Denny Hamlin dashed his hopes of winning and in the 2007 Dickies 500 Jimmie Johnson passed him with three laps remaining to miss out on another opportunity.
“It feels good to get back to Victory Lane,” Kenseth said. “It’s been a long time. You talk about the second-place finishes here, and I got beaten at the end of a lot of these races. It’s great to finish second if you can’t win. But in another way it is like getting kicked in the gut. You have to come back. Like last fall, you look at Jimmy (Fennig, Kenseth’s crew chief), and you come back and look at the guys and you’re leading with two to go, three to go, five to go and you don’t win; it’s always disappointing. So it feels good to have a night like we had tonight with a dominant car and to be able to get the win.”
With the win, Kenseth becomes the fourth Sprint Cup Series driver with multiple Sprint Cup Series victories at Texas Motor Speedway. He joins Roush Fenway Racing teammate Carl Edwards (3), Jeff Burton (2) and Hamlin (2). He also continues to hold the record for most top-5 finishes at Texas with nine in 18 career starts.