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Jeff Gordon is well on his way to winning another WC championship, pursued by race winner Mark Martin. Mark had the field covered and won handily, unfortunately for Mark, second best went to Jeff.
Mark Martin is beyond the point of being frustrated at having no luck in cutting Jeff Gordon's point margin, no matter how well he runs.
"No, I'm not frustrated," he said after slicing Gordon's advantage from 204 to 194 points. "We lost 140 points two weeks ago at Darlington and the only way we're going to be a championship contender is if he loses 140, or 75 twice or something like that.
"If we won 'em all we still wouldn't catch 'em at this rate. I know now how he feels most Sundays. When you've got 'em covered, you've just got 'em covered."
"We'll have to wait and see. We did our job today. Winning is the glue that holds a championship team together and we did that this weekend. If we hadn't of been so hooked up Jeff would've won again this weekend."
Most of the talk around the garage centered on the performance of young driver making his WC debut, Matt Kenseth. Matt has continued to be impressive since this debut, though sometimes he receives less press than other more “colorful” drivers of his age.
From beginning to end, this NASCAR racing weekend at Dover Downs International Speedway was Matt Kenseth's stage, and he took full advantage of the opportunity to showcase his blossoming talents with a victory in Saturday's NASCAR Busch Series Grand National Division MBNA Gold 200 and a scintillating, front-of-the-pack run in Sunday's NASCAR Winston Cup Series MBNA Gold 400 while subbing for Bill Elliott.
After Elliott's father passed away on Thursday night, his team manager, Mike Beam, needed a driver for the No. 94 McDonald's Ford. Beam said he was going to head to the NASCAR Busch Series garage on Friday morning with no real clue who he was going to get to drive "Bill's favorite car."
After consulting with Martin and his crew chief, Jimmy Fennig, he headed to the other end of the Dover facility for a meeting with Robbie Reiser, who owns the Lycos Chevrolet Kenseth drives in the NASCAR Busch Series.
"He was good enough to let us do it and it all fell into place," Beam said. He added that a phone call from Elliott on Sunday morning, before he headed to his father George's funeral, was critical to the team's success.
"I'm glad I had my cell phone on," Beam said, "because it just so happened that Bill called me. We talked for about half an hour, and I told him what the car was doing on the long runs we had Saturday. He told me 'If I was you I'd do this,' I'll be danged if we did it -- we changed both springs in the front and some other stuff and it worked pretty good."
Kenseth started 16th in the McDonald's Ford on Sunday, moved into the top-10 a quarter of the way into the race and was never out of the top-10 the rest of the day, racing fender-to-fender with everyone from race winner Mark Martin and runner-up Jeff Gordon to former series champion Rusty Wallace and Bobby Labonte. He finished sixth, equaling Elliott's best run in the car this season.
"I wasn't intimidated at all while I was running with those guys," he said. "If you sit and think about it I guess you are ... maybe I will be when I go home and watch the tape.
"But when you're racing, you're racing, man. I'm a racer. I race as hard as I can whether it's for 15th or first or 30th. That's just the way I'm built and the way I was raised."
"Matt is a superstar," said Mark Martin, who convinced multi-team owner Jack Roush to sign Kenseth to the development contract, seeing in him many qualities he himself had possessed as a young racer. "Everybody's gonna be after him after today and I think it's kind of funny because he's just not available.
Kenseth becomes only the latest leaf in a book whose pages are rapidly turning over from the era of Waltrip, Earnhardt, Rudd and Wallace to that of Gordon and Burton and Mayfield.
Kenseth had an arduous battle with Wallace down the stretch as they fought for the final spot in the top-five, which would've been totally incomprehensible to Kenseth and many other onlookers. For his part, Wallace was impressed with Kenseth's debut run.
"He raced me clean and he was just excellent behind the wheel," Wallace said, going even farther into racer-speak. "He held a real pretty wheel, in fact. He didn't run into me or nothing, so it seems like his first time out in a Cup car was a good job for him."
Mark Martin is beyond the point of being frustrated at having no luck in cutting Jeff Gordon's point margin, no matter how well he runs.
"No, I'm not frustrated," he said after slicing Gordon's advantage from 204 to 194 points. "We lost 140 points two weeks ago at Darlington and the only way we're going to be a championship contender is if he loses 140, or 75 twice or something like that.
"If we won 'em all we still wouldn't catch 'em at this rate. I know now how he feels most Sundays. When you've got 'em covered, you've just got 'em covered."
"We'll have to wait and see. We did our job today. Winning is the glue that holds a championship team together and we did that this weekend. If we hadn't of been so hooked up Jeff would've won again this weekend."
Most of the talk around the garage centered on the performance of young driver making his WC debut, Matt Kenseth. Matt has continued to be impressive since this debut, though sometimes he receives less press than other more “colorful” drivers of his age.
From beginning to end, this NASCAR racing weekend at Dover Downs International Speedway was Matt Kenseth's stage, and he took full advantage of the opportunity to showcase his blossoming talents with a victory in Saturday's NASCAR Busch Series Grand National Division MBNA Gold 200 and a scintillating, front-of-the-pack run in Sunday's NASCAR Winston Cup Series MBNA Gold 400 while subbing for Bill Elliott.
After Elliott's father passed away on Thursday night, his team manager, Mike Beam, needed a driver for the No. 94 McDonald's Ford. Beam said he was going to head to the NASCAR Busch Series garage on Friday morning with no real clue who he was going to get to drive "Bill's favorite car."
After consulting with Martin and his crew chief, Jimmy Fennig, he headed to the other end of the Dover facility for a meeting with Robbie Reiser, who owns the Lycos Chevrolet Kenseth drives in the NASCAR Busch Series.
"He was good enough to let us do it and it all fell into place," Beam said. He added that a phone call from Elliott on Sunday morning, before he headed to his father George's funeral, was critical to the team's success.
"I'm glad I had my cell phone on," Beam said, "because it just so happened that Bill called me. We talked for about half an hour, and I told him what the car was doing on the long runs we had Saturday. He told me 'If I was you I'd do this,' I'll be danged if we did it -- we changed both springs in the front and some other stuff and it worked pretty good."
Kenseth started 16th in the McDonald's Ford on Sunday, moved into the top-10 a quarter of the way into the race and was never out of the top-10 the rest of the day, racing fender-to-fender with everyone from race winner Mark Martin and runner-up Jeff Gordon to former series champion Rusty Wallace and Bobby Labonte. He finished sixth, equaling Elliott's best run in the car this season.
"I wasn't intimidated at all while I was running with those guys," he said. "If you sit and think about it I guess you are ... maybe I will be when I go home and watch the tape.
"But when you're racing, you're racing, man. I'm a racer. I race as hard as I can whether it's for 15th or first or 30th. That's just the way I'm built and the way I was raised."
"Matt is a superstar," said Mark Martin, who convinced multi-team owner Jack Roush to sign Kenseth to the development contract, seeing in him many qualities he himself had possessed as a young racer. "Everybody's gonna be after him after today and I think it's kind of funny because he's just not available.
Kenseth becomes only the latest leaf in a book whose pages are rapidly turning over from the era of Waltrip, Earnhardt, Rudd and Wallace to that of Gordon and Burton and Mayfield.
Kenseth had an arduous battle with Wallace down the stretch as they fought for the final spot in the top-five, which would've been totally incomprehensible to Kenseth and many other onlookers. For his part, Wallace was impressed with Kenseth's debut run.
"He raced me clean and he was just excellent behind the wheel," Wallace said, going even farther into racer-speak. "He held a real pretty wheel, in fact. He didn't run into me or nothing, so it seems like his first time out in a Cup car was a good job for him."