Kurt Busch gets crashed out, Chevy makes it 3-in-a-row...and in the Ford camp Kenseth shows promise

  Improving: Matt Kenseth and new crew chief Todd Parrott (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
 

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   LAS VEGAS
   So Chevrolet has opened the new season with three straight victories.
   And Dodge's Kurt Busch, Sunday's pole starter, got caught up in that strange crash between Jamie McMurray and teammate Juan Pablo Montoya and was never a factor again.
   And over in the Ford camp?
   Well, Sunday's Las Vegas 400 had moments of promise:
   Matt Kenseth, principally. He was a force in the 400, challenging at times and winding up fifth, in his second run with new crew chief Todd Parrott, who looks to be inspiring the team.
   Kenseth called the afternoon "pretty good. That felt good."
   n fact at one point early in the afternoon three Jack Roush men, Kenseth, Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards all looked strong enough to contend.
   "In the beginning we ran up there – Carl, Greg and me were all up there, and it felt like a few years ago," Kenseth said. "So it seemed like all the cars had a lot more speed this weekend.  It feels like we're on the right track."
    Only once did Kenseth have second thoughts about some pit road adjustments. "I thought we had a loose wheel or something," he said. They couldn't find anything. But I got really loose, and had a real bad vibration; so for safety-sake, we pitted."
   That put him in a hole in the big picture. But he got a late caution to get back in contention.
    Biffle may have had the strongest Ford, but a pit road problem put him too in a hole. Greg Erwin, Biffle's crew chief, conceded "overall I'm disappointed.  We thought we had a lot better car than a 10-place finish.
    "We'd worked our way up into the top-five when that incident occurred on pit road. (AJ Allmendinger, pitting just in front of Biffle, blocked him in.)
    "We knew they were coming down pit road when we were about ready to leave, and their crew chief was working to get him to lay back a little bit and allow us room to squirt out in front of him, and we knew it. 
    "We were watching him very closely, and when he got three car lengths behind us there was no way -- If we had dropped the jack and just spun the wheels (exiting), he would have run right into us.
    "So we had to stop. Then we were trapped in, and it cost us 20 spots on the race track."
     New Ford teammate Kasey Kahne was also again solid (ninth). But he, like others, may be getting sidetracked by Jimmie Johnson's amazing performances: "It's crazy," Kahne said of this latest Johnson miracle finish. "How do you stop them...when they just do it every week?
    "I don't know what their deal is. But they're just that good.
     "I think everybody is probably in awe....like 'Wow! What the heck is going on here?'"

   

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