Kenseth ends race drought with win at Texas

Associated Press

FORT WORTH, Texas

Matt Kenseth had a dominating run at Texas, breaking a 76-race NASCAR Sprint Cup winless streak Saturday night.

Kenseth led 169 of 334 laps at the 11/2-mile, high-banked track for his 19th career victory, his first since California in February 2009. Since his other win at Texas in 2002, Kenseth had four runner-up finishes, including last fall behind Denny Hamlin, and six other top-10 finishes at the track.

This time, the No. 17 Roush Fenway Ford was only trailing late behind Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch when both of those drivers were out of sequence on stops and trying to stretch fuel in hopes of catching a caution. Lucky for Kenseth, there were no yellow flags at the wrong time.

Kenseth went back ahead to stay with 13 laps to go when Busch had to make his final stop and give up a 8.2-second lead. Kenseth finished 8.315 seconds ahead of Clint Bowyer.

“Over two years, I didn’t know if I’d get a chance to get here again,” Kenseth said in Victory Lane.

It was a weekend sweep at Texas Motor Speedway for car owner Jack Roush after Carl Edwards won the Nationwide race Friday night. Roush has 16 NASCAR wins in Texas — eight in Cup, seven in Nationwide and one in Trucks.

All four of Roush’s drivers finished in the top seven. Edwards finished third, 17 seconds back, with Greg Biffle fourth and polesitter David Ragan seventh.

Edwards took over the season points lead by nine over Kyle Busch, who finished 16th.

Stewart had gone 58 laps since his last stop with 58 laps to go, and had nearly a 17-second lead over Kenseth and more than 19 seconds over Bowyer when he made his stop.

Any chance for a victory ended when Stewart got penalized for speeding on pit road. He finished 12th, the last driver on the lead lap even though he coasted across the finish line after running out of fuel.

Kurt Busch finished 10th.