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Matt Kenseth is frustrated by his late-season lack of performance, despite sitting second in the championship. (Photo: Getty Images/Lisa Blumenfield) » More Photos
NO SPEED FOR NO. 17 For most of the Chase for the NASCAR Nextel Cup, Matt Kenseth has been unable to coax the kind of speed out of his Roush Racing Ford that he demonstrated in NASCAR's regular season, when he led the series in points and top-five finishes. Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway, Kenseth's Chase strugglefest continued as stumbled to a 13th-place finish that frankly was better than he ran most of the race. "We fortunately qualified pretty good, so we never lost a lap on those long green-flag runs, but it's pretty frustrating," said the 2003 Cup champion. "We've just got some terribly awful-handling cars for some reason. We can't get out of our own way. I feel bad. I lost a couple of spots at the end. I was trying to hang it out and do everything we could, and we kind of got up in the marbles there, but our cars are so bad that we just can't race with anybody. I don't know why they're so bad. We just got off somewhere, and it's not much fun right now. …I don't know what we're doing wrong, but we're doing something wrong."
JUNIOR JAMMED BY CAUTIONS Dale Earnhardt, Jr.'s NASCAR Nextel Cup title hopes took a grievous blow Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway, where he finished ninth in the Checker Auto Parts 500 and is now 115 points back of leader Jimmie Johnson. For all intents and purposes, Earnhardt's title hopes are nil thanks to Johnson's runner-up effort. In Sunday's race, Earnhardt ran near the front for much of the day, only to fade in the end during a spate of late-race cautions. "We really struggled worse and worse those final 50 laps because of all of those yellow flags," Earnhardt said. "Our car would get tighter and tighter after the tires cooled off. …I'm still proud of my guys… we still managed a top-10 finish despite all of that."
COOL UNDER FIRE Joe Gibbs Racing rookie Denny Hamlin continued to shine Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway, where he finished third in the Checker Auto Parts 500. "We did everything we should do other than winning," Hamlin said. "We ran really well. We ran top-five. We just, you know, those, the No. 48 (points leader and race runner-up Jimmie Johnson) didn't make any mistakes. Honest, they are championship material right now. We are not at the level they are. Those guys are top-five every single week, it seems like, and we're just not to that level."
MAKING HIS MARK Mark
MONEY WORRIES With Robert Yates likely selling off either the rights to his No. 88 owner points or perhaps even his entire Mooresville, N.C., operation, other team owners are clearly worried that the cost of going Nextel Cup racing has escalated out of control. "If people like Robert Yates going away isn't a scary indicator in the garage, then I don't know what to tell you," said Ray Evernham, owner of Evernham Motorsports. "If that keeps continuing to eat up the food chain, that doesn't look good." In 1995, when Evernham was crew chief for Jeff Gordon at Hendrick Motorsports, the team won the Cup championship with a budget of $5 million. "I can't run my Busch car on $5 million right now," Evernham said. "The top teams are spending well over $20 million (per car), and it's going to take a major jump next year. You've got the Car of Tomorrow and the ripple effects of Toyota coming in. …I've got to come up with another $8 million to spend. If we hadn't had a great year, right now I'd be really scared." Evernham's solution? Franchising. "If they (NASCAR) don't do something to protect us, we're going to be gone," Evernham said. "How can we not look down the road at franchising? Otherwise it's just going to be an unbelievable bidding war. …And it's not going to be who has the most money to buy the cars and motors, it's going to be who has the most money to buy the talent."
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