Kenseth, Harvick hope to get back on track

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| Friday, October 27, 2006 1:04 AM CDT | () comments

Scripps Howard

Matt Kenseth is back atop the Nextel Cup standings with four races to go, but he hasn’t quite been a ball of fire recently.

Kenseth is on top almost by default, after Jeff Burton’s blown engine at Martinsville Speedway blew the title chase wide open again.

Kenseth isn’t quite in high gear, and he has been saying for several weeks that he and his Jack Roush-owned team need to get back in championship shape.

“The championship is still wide open,” Kenseth said, noting that he has four rivals fewer than 50 points behind him.

“Yes, we’re leading, and that’s definitely better than the alternative,” Kenseth said. “But we have to start running better, or we’ll see it slip away.

Kevin Harvick, the driver in second place, could say the same.

“I feel really good about where we are, considering the last few weeks — an engine failure at Dover, transmission trouble at Charlotte, and we wrecked at least once last week, we wrecked at Kansas, we wrecked at Talladega,” Harvick said. “We’ve had decent finishes, but a lot of drama.”

The championship chase, using Kenseth’s word, has been “sloppy.”

Harvick, though, calls it “a Catch-22. Everybody is pushing everything to the extreme, engines, bodies, drivers. But when you push it too far, you crash or blow.

“It appears to be sloppy, but for a lot of us who have had good fortune through the year, it seems bad fortune has caught up.”

For Harvick, Atlanta Motor Speedway, this weekend’s stop, presents mixed emotions. He won at AMS in 2001 in only his third tour start.

At times, Harvick conceded, that seems like so, so long ago.

“Most people probably don’t even remember back in 2001,” he said. “That’s kind of the ironic thing. Under the circumstances that we faced, and to perform as a team like that, we won’t ever forget that moment.”