Kenseth picks up second victory of season

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Maybe practice is overrated.

Matt Kenseth won the Samsung/Radio Shack 500 on Monday despite running only five laps in practice at Texas Motor Speedway.

His few laps came Friday, before he blew an engine. Saturday's practice was rained out, and more wet weather Sunday postponed the race, leaving everyone guessing about chassis set-ups on the repaved 1 1/2-mile oval.

Kenseth found the answer, holding the lead with a late-race, two-tire stop and driving to an easy victory in his No. 17 Roush Racing Ford.

"When you have a fast car, sometimes you don't want to practice too much and start making changes that might slow you down," Kenseth said. "Really, we had kind of decided on our own what we were gong to run on our car and it was pretty close to the set-up I ran on my Busch car Saturday."

Kenseth finished fifth in the Busch race.

The key moment in Monday's race was the two-tire pit stop near the end.

"We lost a race like that in California in my rookie year by taking four tires," Kenseth said. "We didn't want to do that again, and we knew if some of those other guys got out ahead of us, we probably wouldn't be able to get past them."

It was the second win of the season and the third of his career for the former NASCAR Winston Cup rookie of the year, who solidified his hold on second place -- behind Sterling Marlin -- in the season points.

Jeff Gordon was able to hold off Mark Martin for second -- 0.888 seconds, or about eight car-lengths, behind Kenseth. The winner averaged 142.455 mph in the race slowed by 41 laps of caution.

The leaders made their final pit stops on lap 308, in the last of seven caution periods in the 334-lap event.

Kenseth got a very fast pit stop and came back onto the track ahead of Gordon, who also took only two tires on his Chevrolet.