KENSETH BREAKS OUT OF SLUMP AT MOST UNLIKELY VENUE

Martinsville Speedway has never been kind to Matt Kenseth, so there was little reason to believe that he could break out of the worst four-race stretch of his Cup career on Sunday. But, Kenseth and crew chief, Robbie Reiser, used great pit strategy and a solid No. 17 Ford Fusion to avoid 21 caution flags and hang on for fifth-place finish in the Subway 500. The top-five finish was Kenseth’s first since Michigan in August and his first at Martinsville’s .526-mile oval since 2002.

Perfect conditions greeted a crowd of 66,500 fans for Sunday’s race as points leader, Jeff Gordon, led the field of 43 to the green flag at 1:49 PM Eastern. Kenseth, flying the R+L Carriers colors for the fourth and final time of 2007, started 24th.

Kenseth admittedly isn’t too fond of Martinsville Speedway, but was happy with the way the car was handling early on and it showed on the track. By lap six he was already up to the 20th position and looking for more. When the field came to pit road on lap 46, Kenseth was in the 16th spot and was asking for more bite off of the corner and to free the car up through the center of the turn.

For most of the afternoon, Kenseth dealt with the same issue, needing a little more bite in the rear tires off the turns. But, as often is the case, the big hurdles at Martinsville are the wrecks – 21 of them during Sunday’s race. Kenseth, with help from spotter, Bob Jeffrey, navigated his way through all of them with little incident and was able to keep his car’s fenders clean for all 506 laps, even through a green-white-checkered finish.

Several times during Sunday’s race the field got out of sequence on pit stops and because of that Kenseth ran a portion of the race in the top five as well another portion between 15th and 20th. After Kenseth’s second-to-last stop on lap 349, he was running in the 15th position. But, Reiser made, what turned out to be, the call of the race during the next and final stop on lap 396.

Track position at Martinsville is always at a premium, more so than any other track on the circuit, and for that reason, Reiser had a big decision to make on the final stop. Kenseth entered the pits in the 11th position, and the call was made for two tires only, placing Kenseth fourth when the race restarted on lap 403.

With only 97 laps remaining the challenge for Kenseth was to hang on the best he could for the remainder of the event. Playing to Kenseth’s advantage was the number of cautions that would occur in the final 103 laps. To be exact, there were eight cautions for a total of 42 laps from lap 404 to lap 506 (the race went into overtime).

Though Kenseth initially was hesitant about the strategy, with the cautions coming in bunches over the final 100 laps, the two-tire call worked perfectly and Kenseth was able to hang on to finish fifth; breaking one of the worst slumps in his career, and scoring a rare top-five at his least favorite track.

“Well, it's still one of my least favorites because you get run into and you run into people and all that stuff is going on,” Kenseth said. “But, certainly, like any other track, the better you run the more fun it is. We didn't run horribly bad today. We called the race right and got a good finish."

TWO TIRES AT THE END WAS THE RIGHT CALL?

"If it would have gone green, I don't think it would have worked but with all the short runs it worked out for us. When you get all of those short runs and everybody starts wrecking, you only run eight or nine laps at a time and with runs like that, four tires wasn''t going to pass you. It was alright."