Kenseth looks for his first victory in a year

CONCORD, N.C. -- It's been a long, frustrating year since Matt Kenseth last raced his way into Victory Lane. The consistency he used to win a NASCAR championship has been replaced by a steady stream of disappointing finishes.

As he attempts to defend his title tonight in the Nextel All-Star Challenge, Kenseth has never felt farther off the pace. He has just one top-10 finish this season and is 21st in the points standings.

"It has been really frustrating because I know that all of us are capable of doing much better than what we're doing," he said. "There has been a lot of things that have been out of our control. But lately, the last two weeks, we just ran awful, which is even more frustrating."

Kenseth earned the nickname of "Mr. Consistency" in 2003 when his knack of finishing around seventh place every week helped him win the championship. He won just one race that season.

NASCAR then overhauled its points system, creating a 10-race playoff format to crown its Nextel Cup champion partly because of the Kenseth's anticlimactic title run.

But Kenseth stormed out of the gate last year, winning the second and third races of the season. Then he won the All-Star Challenge and followed it by finishing third a week later in the Coca-Cola 600.

He left Lowe's Motor Speedway in May with nine top-10 finishes in 12 races and the $1 million paycheck for winning the All-Star event.

Then the bottom slowly began to fall out. Although he qualified for NASCAR's 10-race Chase for the Championship, he finished a distant eighth in the final standings while teammate Kurt Busch won the title.

Things haven't changed this season, either. Busch, Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle, his teammates at Roush Racing, have combined to win five of the first 11 races.

Kenseth, meanwhile, has led just 112 laps this season and his best finish was an eighth at Las Vegas in March.

"It's extra frustrating because our teammates are up there leading laps and winning races and we haven't been able to run with them really for most of the year," Kenseth said. "But there's not a lot you can really do about it. It's not going to do any good to get mad or do anything else. You just have to keep working on it."

Kenseth has been through tough times before, most recently in 2001 when he went winless and finished 13th in the points. He kept that difficult season in mind when he won the title in 2003 and had a low-key celebration.

"In 2001, we had an awful year and I always said that I would never take it for granted how hard it is in this sport to run good and to run competitively all the time, and I haven't forgotten that," he said. "Every day I wake up I realize how lucky I am and how fortunate I am to be doing what I love to do and what my passion is ... and make a really great living at it at the same time."

Still, he wants badly to get his season straightened out and needs to do it before he falls too far behind. He must either be in the top 10 in points or less than 400 points behind the leader after the 26th race of the season to be eligible to race for the Nextel Cup title.

Kenseth has 15 races left to get into the Chase and is currently 65 points away from becoming eligible. The All-Star race is a non-points event, so his finish Saturday night won't change his status.

Still, a victory could set the tone for a turnaround and give him momentum heading into next week's Coca-Cola 600. Kenseth won the 600 as a rookie in 2000.

To do so, he'll have to master the new track surface at Lowe's Motor Speedway, which was smoothed in the turns this spring in an effort to create better racing.

Kenseth and his No. 17 team were one of the few not to test here earlier this month, and he wasn't exactly confident that he would be able to adjust.

"Not to be a pessimist, but we haven't been running exactly with the best fortune lately," Kenseth said.