Matt Kenseth holds off Kyle Larson to win at Dover
Matt Kenseth withstood a fury of charges from Kyle Larson over the last 35 laps of Sunday’s race at Dover to grab his first win of the season and deny Larson the first win of his career.
Kenseth was the leader on the race’s final restart and kept the lead over Larson, who had one of the fastest cars over the second half of the race. Larson made multiple attempts to dive underneath Kenseth – especially in turns 3 and 4 – but Kenseth was able to keep Larson pinched down enough to halt Larson’s momentum and prevent him from jumping ahead.
Complicating matters for Larson was also the presence of Chase Elliott. As Kenseth and Larson battled shortly after the restart, Elliott closed in on Larson and briefly passed him for second.
Larson got back by him but it’s fair to wonder how much he used up while keeping Elliott at bay. Larson was able to make one last attempt at Kenseth over the final three laps but was unable to gain enough of an advantage to complete a pass.
“We were quite tight most of the day,” Kenseth said. I watched [teammate Carl Edwards] earlier in the race use some grip off of turn 4 in the middle of the track and a few other guys I kind of saw that as they were going by me.”
“Kyle Larson is extremely talented and I knew if I was on the bottom, he was going to be on the top. We got so free, I started working that middle groove and I was able to get just far enough ahead. If he would have snuck outside of me, it would have been over. I had just enough momentum to stay in front of him.”
Kenseth grabbed the lead off pit road before a restart with 47 laps to go and kept the lead following the restart when second-place Jimmie Johnson had a transmission issue that led to an 18-car pileup. In addition to Johnson, the accident took out Kevin Harvick, the race’s early dominator, and Martin Truex Jr., the driver who had arguably had the fastest car of the previous 50 laps.
And if it’s fair to wonder how much Larson’s pursuit of Kenseth was affected by Elliott, it’s also fair to assume that the sprint to the finish was greatly affected by what immediately happened after the 18-car pileup.
Edwards, another driver who was fast throughout the entirety of Sunday’s race, got loose shortly after the restart following the melee and slammed into the inside wall after contact from Larson. Edwards might have had a car capable of passing Kenseth for the lead and keep everyone else at bay.
So perhaps the events of the final 50 laps were a balancing of the karmic universe in Kenseth’s favor. While the final 35 were nothing short of a master class in car control and not overdriving, he got there because events went his way.
And nothing much had gone Kenseth’s way throughout the first 11 races of the season. There was the final two corners at Daytona, his penalty and the miscommunication that followed at Atlanta, a crash at Las Vegas, a crash at Bristol and his flip at Talladega, just to name a few.
But throughout the madness Kenseth has shown the same speed his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates have had en route to six wins. He just simply needed some good fortune. He finally got it Sunday.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
