Matt Kenseth Insists Controversial Cup Title Had A Solid Run-Up and Did Not Come Out of the Blue

Matt Kenseth Insists Controversial Cup Title Had A Solid Run-Up and Did Not Come Out of the BlueStory byMatt Kenseth prepares for practice Friday, August 16, 2019, for the ARCA Midwest Tour Howie Lettow Classic 100 race at Madison International Speedway in the Town of Rutland, Wisconsin. Race17 2Gowtham RamalingamSat, January 31, 2026 at 1:45 AM UTC·2 min read

Matt Kenseth is often attributed as the driver who pushed NASCAR to change its traditional championship format and come up with ‘The Chase’ format after winning the 2003 Cup Series championship. The reason for this has long been touted as that he won the title despite having only one victory lane visit throughout the season.

Many called him an undeserved champion and deemed the way in which he secured the title to be boring. But it wasn’t luck that led to his success. It was hard work and pure logic that had a longer runway than the 36 races within the season. Kenseth spoke about this in detail on The Scene Vault podcast recently.

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It all began with him winning five races in the 2002 season, driving the No. 17 Roush Racing Ford. Despite multiple wins, he only managed to finish eighth in the points due to the multiple mistakes he made throughout the season. But the experience led him to believe that he could do better if he eliminated those mistakes.

He said, “Robbie (crew chief) and I even talked about that because we won so many races in 2002, but we also made a lot of mistakes. Like, we made a lot of mistakes. I’m like, man, if we can eliminate all those mistakes and still get the wins, or even if you don’t get as many wins, if you can take all those bad days we have and just finish to what our potential is, right?”

He approached the 2003 season with the understanding that he shouldn’t make his bad days worse. Drivers often try going from sixth place to fourth place in a race and wind up somewhere in the bottom of the field. Kenseth intelligently avoided such errors, and that is what led to him becoming a champion at the end of the 2003 season.

Even Ryan Newman, who had eight wins that year, couldn’t match his tally. This presented a problem for the sanctioning body. It wanted its champion to be someone who won a lot of races and not someone who seldom made the headlines.

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To tackle this issue, it introduced the Chase format and broke things down into two parts: The regular season with 26 races and the postseason, or Chase, with 10 races. Regardless of how it may appear on the surface, Kenseth’s championship was backed by more than a year of hard work and strategy.

Circling back to 2026, the Chase format once again finds its place in NASCAR as drivers prepare to take on a tweaked version of the original after much dismay over the 3-race elimination Playoffs.

The post Matt Kenseth Insists Controversial Cup Title Had A Solid Run-Up and Did Not Come Out of the Blue appeared first on The SportsRush.

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