NASCAR Cup Series

Kenseth 'pleasantly surprised' just to make Eliminator Round

Published Nov. 11, 2014 3:15 p.m. ET

Jared Turner

Matt Kenseth came painfully close to advancing out of the Eliminator Round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup and into this weekend's winner-take-all championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Kenseth won't get the opportunity to fight for his second top series NASCAR title, however, after finishing the three-race Eliminator Round just three points shy of the total necessary to reach the Championship Round.

Looking back on Kenseth's three Eliminator Round results, it's easy to pinpoint the race that ultimately doomed the Joe Gibbs Racing driver's title hopes.

Kenseth finished third in Sunday's final Eliminator Race at Phoenix International Raceway, and came home sixth in the Eliminator opener at Martinsville.

But a 25th-place finish in the middle race -- Texas, where Kenseth actually started on the pole and had one of the strongest cars before late-race contact with Ryan Newman -- proved devastating to his championship bid.

So while the 2003 Sprint Cup Series champion certainly regretted coming up short in Sunday's showdown at Phoenix, he tried to focus on some positives -- one of them being that Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin will be among the four championship finalists at Homestead.

"That was a great run for this Dollar General team," Kenseth said after trailing only race winner Kevin Harvick and Jeff Gordon at the checkered flag. "We exceeded our expectations here. It was great run for us and I'm proud of the guys for being third. I wish we would have made it in, but last week was disastrous, so it was fun being here with a shot -- just wish we could have come through. We just have to get faster.

"Fortunately Denny is in, so hopefully Denny can go take it home at Homestead. Definitely disappointed we didn't make it through, but it's just been so up and down and our downs weren't good enough and our highs weren't high enough to make it into the next round. These guys did a great job -- this is the best we've ran here in a long time -- so I'm looking forward to Homestead next week."

One of three winless drivers to make the Chase based on points, Kenseth admitted late Sunday that he never felt like his team had the horses to make a serious run at this year's title, despite showing improved speed in all three races of the Eliminator Round.

"In a way it's been that way all year," said Kenseth, who notched a career-high seven victories and finished a close second in the standings to Jimmie Johnson in 2013, his first season at Joe Gibbs Racing.

"I was pleasantly surprised that we've been able to advance from round to round, because we just haven't been that fast and we've had a lot of bad things happen. We got wrecked out of Loudon (in September) and had a lot of things happen here or there. Glad we were in, and wish we were still in it."

Kenseth at least takes heart in the fact that he ran so well at Phoenix, a flat 1-mile track where he hadn't posted a top-five finish since 2007.

"I thought we had a top-10 car all day," Kenseth said. "I could never run with the 4 (Harvick), but there were times when it was kind of equal to the 24 (Gordon) and the 2 (Brad Keselowski) was kind of even. I thought we had a top-10 car, and if we could get into the top five, I thought we would have a shot."

VIDEO: Matt Kenseth talks about coming up short at Phoenix