Jeff Gross/Getty Images for NASCAR
It’s hard to put Matt Kenseth and the word “excitement” in the same sentence.
While Sprint Cup racing has more than its share of colorful characters, ranging from Kyle Busch to Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Tony Stewart to newcomer Scott Speed, Kenseth is the exact opposite.
He’s as vanilla as they come. He doesn’t toot his own horn, rarely grabs headlines for dirty racing and answers questions from the media with little pizzazz.
Click Here For More Images Of NASCAR
Heck, Kenseth flies so far under the radar that he might as well be called “Mr. Stealth,” as opposed to a guy like former Cup driver Jimmy Spencer, whose nickname is “Mr. Excitement.”
While he tries not to bother anyone, Kenseth’s lack of overt personality has brought about its share of criticism—even though Kenseth is comfortable in his own skin as a laid-back kind of guy.
The way he sees it, if anyone has a problem with his personality, it’s their problem, not his.
So, after winning the first two races of the 2009 Cup season and being on the verge of becoming the first driver in NASCAR history to win the first three races to start a season, Kenseth won’t deviate from the norm.
While others are talking up the potential of Kenseth winning three in a row, he enters Sunday’s Shelby 427 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with a ho-hum viewpoint about what he’s done thus far in ‘09.
“I haven’t really thought a whole bunch about it, to be honest with you,” Kenseth said Friday at LVMS. “I didn’t think we would have won the first two races, so I haven’t really thought about the third. We’re just going to take it one race at a time like we always do and just be business as usual.”
Come on, Matt, couldn’t you be a bit more excited? After all, you didn’t even win one race all of last season. What do you have to say about that, Matt?
Click Here For More Images Of NASCAR
“Hopefully we can get our car to handle good this weekend and have a shot,” Kenseth said. “The pit crew has been operating at an extremely high level, and so have all the guys getting the cars to handle and run—the engine guys and everything. So, I feel like we have the tools to be competitive and we’ll just try to be as competitive as we can and hopefully be somewhere in position at the end.”
Excuse me for one second ... yaaaaawwwwwwwnnnnnnnnn.
OK, much better.
Finally, Kenseth gave us some meat to chew on, giving acknowledgement to the significance of the task at hand.
“It would be huge, obviously, to win this week,” Kenseth said. “But every race is difficult to win. It took us a whole year to win a race, so everything has got to line up just right.
