NASCAR Champ Kenseth Steers Clear of Limelight

One is the NASCAR Winston Cup champion and the other is one of his challengers, but if you were following Matt Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt Jr. around, it would be difficult to believe that Kenseth is the champion.

Case in point: The close friends were driving home together from a race in Darlington, S.C., when they decided to stop for a bite to eat.

“We just freaked everyone out,” Kenseth said. “We barely stuck our faces in the door when everybody in the place swarmed over Junior. We couldn’t order. We couldn’t do anything but get out of there. I certainly don’t envy his popularity. In fact, I feel bad for him. I wouldn’t want that.”

Case in point II: Kenseth was back home in Cambridge, Wis., a hamlet near Madison with a population of only 1,100. He went into the neighborhood coffee shop.

“There were two teenage girls behind the counter,” he said. “One of them asked if I was a celebrity. I said no. Then one of them giggled and said, ‘Oh, we thought you were Matt Kenseth.’ When I said I was, they giggled some more and that was about it.”

Friday night, at NASCAR’s awards dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, Kenseth will get a check for $4.25 million as the Winston Cup champion -- the last Winston Cup champion.

“I wonder if, next year, I’ll be introduced as the Winston Cup champion or the Nextel Cup champion,” Kenseth mused.

Winston, a brand of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., ended its relationship with NASCAR this year and will be replaced as title sponsor by Nextel Communications.

Whatever he is called, there is no argument that Kenseth is the least-known champion since his fellow Wisconsinite, the late Alan Kulwicki, who won in 1992. Coincidentally, Bill Elliott was the race winner in the races in which Kulwicki and Kenseth clinched their championships.

Kenseth won only one of 36 races this year, in Las Vegas, and that was in early March, the third event of the season. No one else had won the championship with only one victory in 30 years, going all the way back to Benny Parsons in 1973.

Then too, Ryan Newman grabbed most of the headlines with eight wins and 11 poles. And when the headlines weren’t about Newman or Little E or Jimmy Johnson or Jeff Gordon, they were more often about fuel mileage or bumping and banging between drivers. Not about Kenseth.

If his name hadn’t been atop the standings for 32 consecutive weeks, Kenseth might have been the least publicized driver in the series. And that is just the way he likes it.

It doesn’t mean the 31-year-old driver of Jack Roush’s No. 17 DeWalt-sponsored Ford Taurus isn’t appreciative of his accomplishments.

“Not in my wildest dreams, when I was racing as a kid back in Wisconsin, did I see myself getting to this point,” he said. “At that time, I hoped I might get as far as the ASA [American Speed Assn.] and maybe win enough to be able to drive a race car for a living. As for NASCAR and the Winston Cup, I never thought I would even as much as sit in one of those cars, much less be the champion.”

Kenseth and young Earnhardt have been pals off the track and fierce rivals on it since 1997, when they were rookies in the Busch series. In 1998 and ‘99, Earnhardt won the Busch series titles, with Kenseth a close second the first year and third the next.

“Basically, we grew up together in NASCAR,” Kenseth said. “Maybe one reason we have stayed such good friends is that we rarely discuss racing. Both of us want to win, but I’m happy when he wins and he feels the same way about me. The one thing I especially like about him is that, while he’s definitely Dale’s kid, he’s never changed in his attitude with his buddies.

“He respects us, that we made it without having any money or any influence. And I respect him for racing hard and earning what he’s done in the shadow of his dad. He had to prove himself, because of his name, probably more than any of us, and he’s done it. Sure, we were closer before I got married and before his dad was killed [events that occurred less than six weeks apart], but we’re still good friends who do things together.”

Earnhardt had the edge over Kenseth in Busch, but in Winston Cup, it has turned around. Kenseth edged out Earnhardt for rookie of the year in 2000 and this year beat him to the championship. Earnhardt finished third and will collect $1.275 million at the awards dinner.

Kenseth was 16 when he drove in his first race, in a limited late model stock car, at Columbus Speedway, but the seeds of his career were planted three years earlier.

“My dad was 45 and I was 13 when he decided he wanted a race car,” Kenseth recalled. “So he bought one and raced it at Jefferson Speedway, a little quarter-mile track not far from where we lived. He told me that if I worked on it with him, it would be mine to drive when I was 16. Looking back on that time, it was a wonderful learning experience because I learned what made the car go and why, things important to me today when I discuss with Robbie [crew chief Robbie Reiser] how to make it better.

“There was racing three nights a week around [that part of] Wisconsin in the summer, and some weeks I’d race Fridays at Columbus and Dad would race Saturdays at Jefferson. When I was 17, I built myself a new car and, for about six months, we raced against each other. My dad was real excitable and he liked to hit people. I was the calm one and I was always trying to calm him down. Before long, he decided to hang it up and concentrate on my career.

“The thing I remember most about racing him was, one night he set fast time in qualifying and I was the last one out and I went out and beat him. We started one-two on the front row. That was cool.

“And when I wasn’t racing my car, or my dad’s car, I was driving for someone else. I didn’t care who owned it, as long as they’d let me drive.”

Once young Kenseth got his first win -- as a high school junior in his third race when he was 16 -- there was no stopping him. He became the youngest driver to win an ARTGO Challenge series race, at La Crosse, Wis., when he was 19, breaking the record set by Mark Martin, who would later become his mentor and Roush teammate.

Martin watched him in a Busch race at Talladega and recommended him to Roush. When Kenseth won the Winston Cup, it was the first for a Roush Industries driver after 15 frustrating seasons, during which Martin finished second four times and third four more times.

Kenseth won five Winston Cup races a year ago -- the most by any driver -- and finished only eighth in the standings. This year he won only one and is the champion. What made the difference?

“Last year, we had funny little things happen to us,” he said, “pitting at the wrong time with a flat tire, untimely caution flags, getting in wrecks we couldn’t escape, little things that led to DNFs. In a lot of races, we were fast enough to win, but the breaks didn’t fall our way.

“This year, we didn’t consciously do anything different. The breaks just started going our way. I think what happened in Kansas tells it all. We wrecked our primary car -- driver’s error -- during practice and the car was totaled. The crew pulled out the backup and that one was wrecked when we got caught in Michael Waltrip’s crash on Lap 69. The front end was really caved in.

“We were dead last, 43rd, and it would have been easy for the guys to pack it in, but they went to work and patched it up for me to get back on the track. We lost 30 laps, but instead of finishing 43rd, we got up to 37th, which gave us enough more points to make it worthwhile.

“Kansas was a down time, but seeing the way the crew went after it, it was a high point too.”

Winning the championship and getting the spotlight in New York this week haven’t prompted Kenseth to relax. He, Reiser and Roush are already working on 2004.

“In Winston Cup, if you don’t keep moving ahead, you’re going to fall behind,” Kenseth said. “There is no such thing as resting on your laurels.

“We started building our 2004 car a couple of months before we clinched this year. We will have a new nose and new tail for the Taurus and we needed to find out how they work. We’ve had them in the wind tunnel and now we’ve got to get them ready for Daytona.

“You know, Daytona’s not that far away,” the champion said with a wry grin.

The Budweiser Shootout kicks off the season Feb. 7, with the 500 on Feb. 15.