Matt Kenseth’s revenge play leaves everyone looking terrible
Just a hunch, but there’s probably a part of Matt Kenseth that feels guilty for what happened on Sunday afternoon in Turn 1 at Martinsville.
Kenseth has built a championship career on racing hard but clean, tough but fair, and in one jam-it-to-the-floor moment, he rearranged it all. At the moment he hammered Joey Logano’s car into the wall, he wasn’t a champion. He was a guy several laps down taking out the leader, nothing more. That’s what revenge does to you.
_____
Revenge, like Christmas, holds much more power in the buildup than in the minutes after its execution. The anticipation, the rage, the tunnel vision … you convince yourself you’re justified in the moment, and then afterward? You’re trying to explain to everyone, including yourself, what happened.
Kenseth had a decent enough line when asked whether he intended to crash Logano—“some days you’re the bat, some days you’re the ball”—but he couched it in talk of dragging splitters and wheels going down and whatnot. Kenseth was asked at least three separate times, per postrace transcripts, whether he’d intentionally wrecked Logano, and he dodged the question each time.
_____
Why not own it? Why not say, hell yes, I did it, and I’ll do it again if that guy ruins my Chase? Because Kenseth knows that what he did was a cheap move—not exactly “cowardly,” as Logano put it, but not worthy of one of the better drivers in NASCAR history.
The crowd cheered Kenseth, but don’t let that fool you. The crowd was looking for blood—or, at least, wreckage—and Kenseth gave it to them. They weren’t considering what it would cost him, what it would do to his rep. Kenseth had been calling out Logano for weeks, and that kind of tough talk is red meat for the crowd. By the time the red-and-yellow 22 loomed large in Kenseth’s windshield on Sunday, Kenseth had no choice: piledrive him or risk losing even more face.
_____
Respect. That’s what this was about. Kenseth gave a hint into his thinking at another point after the race. “You never like to be in these situations,” he said. “They really stink, to be honest with you, but sometimes you get put in these spots and you’ve got to try to keep respect in the garage area. You can’t get yourself ran over. You can’t get in the Chase next year and get ran over for the same reason.”
Kenseth is nobody’s idea of a chump. He got spun at Kansas when he had the weaker car, older tires. Blaming him for that is like blaming a batter for taking a fastball to the knee. He had every reason to be enraged, every reason to want retribution. And his revenge had the perfect target.
_____
Not to go all blame-the-victim—mainly because revenge, by definition, means that everybody’s a victim at one point—but Logano hasn’t helped matters. He expressed exactly zero remorse for effectively torpedoing Kenseth’s championship chances, even as he had already guaranteed his own spot in the next round. Jeff Gordon called Logano’s post-Kansas attitude “gloating,” and there’s no surer way to rile up an old-school throwback like Kenseth than dancing on his wreckage.
Gordon provides an interesting case study for the arc of Logano’s public rep. Like Logano, Gordon spent the first years of his career speaking in the halting, laugh-to-cover-the-silence cadence of a nervous teenager, even when he proved himself the equal of anyone with a wheel.
Gordon drew the ire of the crowd, especially once he started beating everyone on the track, but he won while keeping the respect of the entire garage. His stepfather John Bickford, instrumental in Gordon’s development, didn’t inject himself into driver disagreements the way Tom Logano does. Logano has a long way to go to win the respect of the garage and the crowd, and as he’s learning, wins aren’t enough.
_____
Thought experiment for all those rallying to Kenseth’s defense. Swap out “Joey Logano” for “Tony Stewart,” “Jeff Gordon,” or, heaven forbid, “Dale Earnhardt Jr.” Same exact situations: spinning Kenseth in a battle for the lead at Kansas without regret, winning three straight, then ending up on the business end of Kenseth’s bumper at Martinsville. Imagine it. The conversation suddenly shifts from “Logano got what he deserved!” to debating how many seasons Kenseth should be suspended.
What’s the appropriate penalty here? Suspension for a race seems about right. Kenseth won public acclaim, and he and Joe Gibbs Racing will need to do some gladhanding with their sponsors, but taking a race off seems fair. NASCAR has its own share of culpability in this mess, yes, but Kenseth’s bid for revenge crossed lines that have been in place long before the Chase was a gleam in Brian France’s eye.
“I lived the ‘do anything for a win’ motto for two years working with Dale Earnhardt, who would have wrecked his mother to win a race,” Larry McReynolds, Fox commentator and former Earnhardt crew chief, said. “I’m fine with that when it’s for a win. But when a driver is laps down, rides around and waits on someone to come around the track, drives him into the wall and purposely wrecks him, that action is way over the line.”
_____
Here’s the problem with revenge: where does it end? Kenseth took more from Logano than Logano took from Kenseth. Doesn’t that, then, obligate Logano to knock out the 20 this time next year? Should Logano’s teammate Brad Keselowski take out Kenseth’s remaining teammates in a one-of-mine-for-one-of-yours cycle? Does this continue every year, every Chase, every time one of these two has a chance to ruin the other’s day? By the codes of revenge, it should, shouldn’t it?
Revenge feels so, so good in the moment. But before long, you’re just going around in circles, each one smaller and more petty than the last.
____
Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter.
And keep up with Jay over on Facebook, too.
