Sunday’s victory at Kentucky Speedway gives Matt Kenseth his fourth win of 2013 and we are still one race shy of the halfway point of the season. He is followed by Jimmie Johnson with three wins.
The most wins that Matt has ever had in a single season in his NASCAR Sprint Cup career has been five and that was in 2002, when he was with Roush-Fenway Racing. Other than 2003, the year when he won the championship, I believe Matt is headed to his best season ever. His strong suit seems to be these mile-and-a-half tracks, so I expect to see him surpass five wins this year. It was a gutsy call Sunday on that last pit stop to only take fuel and no tires, but it paid off in a big way for the Joe Gibbs Racing team.
Even though they are still leading the points and even though, as I mentioned, they do have three wins, I still believe there is work to be done over in the No. 48 camp. If you look at the last five races, they have dominated — and I mean completely dominated — three of them, yet only went to Victory Lane once.
Johnson dominated at Dover, but jumping the restart did him in there. He dominated at Pocono and did get the win. He dominated Sunday at Kentucky, leading 182 laps, but barely escaped the Bluegrass State with a top-10 finish.
Even though they have combined to win seven of our 17 Sprint Cup races so far, I really can’t say that both the No. 20 and the No. 48 have everyone else covered. There’s just way too much racing still to go.
