In the span of two days, Ryan Newman and Matt Kenseth announced their future NASCAR plans. Those days by the way were this week not from the past.
The two veteran drivers will be back behind the wheel as soon as NASCAR racing returns. Newman has made a full recovery from the injuries he sustained in the violent last lap Daytona 500 accident and after sharing his intention to come back last Sunday and was medically cleared by NASCAR to return.
While Newman’s comeback was welcomed and even a bit surprising given its been less than three months since his scary Daytona crash, the Kenseth news was absolutely shocking. Since stepping away from NASCAR at the end of the 2018 campaign when he worked with Roush Fenway Racing on the team’s No. 6 ride, the extent of Kenseth’s racing was an occasional Super Late Model start here or there in his native Wisconsin including a win in last summer’s “Slinger Nationals.”
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But Kenseth wasn’t on anyone’s radar to jump back into a full-time Cup seat except for the one guy that mattered most – Chip Ganassi.
When Ganassi found himself embroiled in controversy around the dismissal of Kyle Larson for his use of insensitive language during a virtual racing event, the very future of his No. 42 ride hung in the balance. The only way to convince sponsors who one by one dismissed themselves from Larson in the aftermath of the incident to stick with his team was for Ganassi to bring in someone who was the polar opposite of controversy. Enter Matt Kenseth.
Aside from his infamous bout with Joey Logano at Martinsville in 2015, Kenseth’s low key and workmanlike demeanor has been his calling card. That along with his sometimes sarcastic personality and accomplishments like a Cup Series championship and 39 wins at NASCAR’s highest level.
Ganassi is hoping the combination of the two will lead to the necessary funding needed just to keep the car on track as well as better results.
“I have always said that when we have to fill a driver spot, that I owe it to our team, our partners and our fans to put the best available driver in the car,” Ganassi said in a statement. “We are doing exactly that with Matt.”
In Kenseth and holdover Kurt Busch, Ganassi now has one of if not the most veteran teams in the sport. Kenseth just turned 48 last month while Busch will be 42 in November. In an era when drivers of that age group are choosing to leave the sport, Kenseth and Busch are the absolute exceptions to that trend.
Now that the surprise is has subsided and the thought of Kenseth back as a full-time driver becomes more accepted, how fast he can get up to speed will be one of the first questions. A high downforce, lower horsepower rules package (except short tracks and road courses) as well as a change to a new manufacturer in Chevrolet – a make he drove early in his NASCAR career in the Xfinity Series – are just a couple of the new challenges that await Kenseth.
In typical Kenseth fashion, he’ll be ready.
“You just never know what life is going to throw at you,” he told NBC Sports.
These days those are words we all can agree on.
The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Motor Racing Network.
