Kenseth claims season title at Pop Secret 400

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- Matt Kenseth earned his first Winston Cup championship Sunday with a fourth-place finish at North Carolina Speedway.

Bill Elliott won the Pop Secret Popcorn 400 while Kenseth, who has led the points since the fourth race of the season, wrapped up the first Cup title for car owner Jack Roush with one race remaining.

"I got all this stuff bottled up inside because I didn't want to get too excited the last few months," Kenseth said. "I don't know what I'm going to do now. It's an awesome feeling."

The champion took a slower victory lap in his No. 17 Ford, followed by a pair of open trucks carrying most of his Roush Racing team, several of them waving championship banners as the crowd stood and cheered.

"This is beyond my wildest dreams," Kenseth said. "I never thought I'd have the opportunity to sit in one of these cars, much less be the champion. I'm just thankful to be in good equipment with good people working on it."

The championship was very emotional for Roush, who finished second in the points four times with Mark Martin in his first 15 years in the Winston Cup series and has acknowledge bitter feelings over some of rulings by NASCAR over the years.

"It's kind of like going through a plate glass window," Roush said. "There's a lot of pain breaking through it. But I have probably fussed and complained about some things I probably shouldn't have."

Kenseth came into Sunday's race knowing he needed only to finish seventh or better to end the suspense after leading the points and feeling the pressure of being out front since March 9 in Atlanta.

"There's a feeling you get in your stomach when you're leading the race and you see somebody coming up behind you," Kenseth explained. "It's an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach, and that's what it feels like, like I've been leading a race for the last three months."

The 31-year-old driver from Cambridge, Wis., took the title in his fourth season in NASCAR's top stock car series with consistency, winning just once but coming up with 11 top fives and 26 top 10s in 35 races.

He is 226 points ahead of runner-up Jimmie Johnson with only next weekend's race at Homestead-Miami Speedway remaining. The most a driver can make up in one race is 151 points.

The 48-year-old Elliott, who has been the subject of retirement rumors, came up with his first win of the season, the 44th of his career and first since taking the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis last year.

Despite qualifying fifth, Elliott had to start at the back of the field after his team changed an engine Friday. He charged to the front in a hurry, leading for the first time on lap 186 and going on to lead a race-high 140 of the 393 laps on the 1.017-mile Rockingham oval.

Johnson was second and got one last shot at Elliott on a restart with 11 laps to go. But Elliott pulled away steadily and drove his Evernham Motorsports Dodge across the finish line 1.23-seconds -- about 10 car-lengths -- ahead of Johnson's Chevrolet.

"It seems like everything has just come together for this team the last few months," Elliott said. "We had a great car here today. That thing just came on when the race started and stayed good all day."

Johnson still faces a battle for second in the standings with Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished 13th and fell from second to third in the standings.

Earnhardt trails Johnson by 38 points going to Homestead.

Kenseth, who has struggled in qualifying most of the season, started 23rd in the 43-car field. As he has in almost every race this year, Kenseth moved toward the front once the green flag waved and found himself in the top 10 on the 223rd lap.

Jeremy Mayfield finished third, passing Kenseth for the position on lap 387. Kenseth was followed across the finish line by Ryan Newman, rookie Tony Raines, Jeff Burton, Bobby Labonte, 2002 series champion Tony Stewart and Sterling Marlin, the last driver on the lead lap.

Kenseth got a break on lap 242 when he was about to go to the pits during a round of green flag stops. An instant before he got to pit road, Martin's engine blew.

Kenseth was able to make a hard right turn and get back on the racetrack. NASCAR made him restart at the end of the lead lap line for making that move after he had committed to the pits, but Kenseth still found himself seventh for the restart after several other top cars lost a lap after making their stops before the yellow came out.

On a day when there were 10 cautions and plenty of bumping and banging in traffic, Kenseth was able to stay out of trouble.