FORT WORTH, Texas — Matt Kenseth has led more laps than anybody in Texas, current points leader Greg Biffle has seven consecutive top-10 finishes and Carl Edwards is the only three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup winner there.
The 1½-mile, high-banked track certainly suits the Roush Fenway drivers.
“I don’t really know why, but it has been a pretty good track for us in the past,” said Kenseth, who has two wins and 13 top-10 finishes in 19 starts there. “Whenever you come back to a track you’ve had success at, then I think you probably always look forward to coming back to it maybe a little bit more.”
Owner Jack Roush was winning races at Texas Motor Speedway even before his current trio of drivers. He has been to Victory Lane and gathered quite a winning collection of cowboy hats by taking eight of 22 races.
Jeff Burton won the inaugural Texas race in 1997 while driving for Roush, and Mark Martin won the following year when there was still only one Cup race a year at the track.
“You feel like you need to capitalize when you come to this track,” Kenseth said. “You feel like yourself or one of your team cars needs to have a shot to win, and you should all be running up toward the front.”
That is where the Roush drivers hope and expect to be today in the first scheduled night race of the season. The rain-postponed Daytona 500 was run on a Monday night.
Martin Truex Jr. won the pole in qualifying Friday, Kenseth will start second and Biffle third.
All three Roush drivers tonight had top-five finishes in both Texas races last year.
“It is a fun race track for me and for our team,” Biffle said.”It is nice to sit in a race car and know that we can do this.”
Owners Joe Gibbs and Rick Hendrick both have three victories in Texas, the closest to Roush.
Hendrick Motorsports is still looking for its first win this season. The next one will be the owner’s 200th in a career that began in 1984 when Geoff Bodine won at Martinsville.
“We’re thinking about it all the time, and Rick reminds us all the time to get it out of the way,” Jimmie Johnson said. “Man, we’ve been all around it, and have had a lot of shots at it this year.”
