Kenseth Not Thinking Playoffs When He Battled Jones

By ESPN

Matt Kenseth swears he wasn't thinking about the playoffs when he was battling Erik Jones for the lead Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway.

A Jones win would have severely dampened Kenseth's hopes to make the playoffs as it would have taken away another spot for the winless.

Nope, Kenseth had something else on his mind when racing Jones.

"I was more thinking about: That's my replacement and I better run him down and pass him to show that I can still do it better than he can," Kenseth said. "I had those thoughts.

"But I wasn't thinking about the playoffs. I was thinking about trying to win the race."

Kenseth didn't quite catch Jones, who finished second, and Kenseth's fourth-place finish wasn't a win but it was a good points day, a day that could go a long way to making the playoffs. Three spots currently are open for winless drivers. Chase Elliott has a 69-point cushion on Clint Bowyer, the first driver outside the cutoff. Kenseth has a 61-point edge and McMurray sits 58 points ahead of Bowyer.

The finish at Bristol came a week after Kenseth lost about 20 spots in the final laps at Michigan. It appeared to be a flat tire, but Kenseth said it wasn't.

"The 24 [of Chase Elliott] wrecked us out last week, which was very disappointing," Kenseth said. "I obviously lost a big chunk [of points]. ... That was a terrible ending."

That made the Bristol finish even more meaningful as he can feel somewhat good about his position as long as no winless driver such as Jones, who is 126 points behind McMurray in the standings and needs a win actually does win.

Kenseth has six top-10 finishes in the past seven races.

"We're definitely more of a contender," Kenseth said. "We're not as dominant as I would like to be. We're getting better at the right time."

While he's still looking for a job for next season, the 45-year-old Kenseth doesn't seem all that worried that JGR is replacing him with Jones after this season.

"There's more to life than racing," Kenseth said. "Yeah, I wish it kind of maybe would have went down a different way or maybe I had another year or two there. That's not the way it worked out.

"I think everything happens or doesn't happen for a reason. It will all become clear."
Xfinity Series: Sadler clinches spot four races early

Elliott Sadler has clinched a spot in the playoffs on points despite there being four races left in the regular season. He has a 422-point edge on 13th in the standings, and 353 points over ninth -- ninth being the key in case four drivers outside the top-12 win the next four races.

But the margin Sadler is thinking of is 110 -- that's his current margin on William Byron. Sadler doesn't have a win this year but winning the regular-season title is worth three wins as far as playoff points as the regular-season champ gets 15, while the runner-up gets 10 with the rest of the top 10 earning playoff points on an 8-to-1 scale.

"I'll be honest with you, halfway through the year -- we hadn't done our research -- we didn't know we could get 15 points," Sadler said. "So we were like, 'Let's be aggressive. Let's take chances. So what, where we finish?' Then we're like, 'Wait a minute. We have 15 points. That's worth three wins.' We can't throw races away."

Sadler obviously wants to win but he knows he needs to set himself up for the best playoff position possible. He probably could take chances now for wins and still capture the regular-season 15-point bonus.

"We're very consistent," Sadler said. "We're very fast. we had some chances to win some races this year. We've had ourselves in position. It's tough to win these races. Not everybody can."
Camping World Truck Series: Racing on the bubble

With just two races left before the Camping World Truck Series playoff field is set, drivers are trying to race those on the bubble as well as the field.

Ben Rhodes was happy with his fifth-place finish at Bristol because he finished ahead of Ryan Truex.

There are three spots currently available to the winless for the truck playoffs. Chase Briscoe has a 91-point edge on Grant Enfinger, who is currently on the outside looking in. Rhodes has a 26-point edge and Truex has a nine-point edge.

"We ran in front of the guys we had to beat for points," Rhodes said. "The wins will come. We had really good speed earlier this year. We fell into a lull when we had some crashes.

"We're getting ourselves out of that now. ... It's a big positive if we can run in front of them. We came in here and did what we needed to do."

Enfinger, saddled with a 10-point penalty from Michigan for failing postrace weights and losing his crew chief for two races for weight attached improperly, finished fourth at Bristol.

"It's a good run for us," Enfinger said. "It's not a great run. We can do it one of two ways -- we can have one great run or three good runs.

"Our guys keep fighting. We're racing everybody. We need every point we can get."

The truck regular season ends with the road course Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and then a 1.5-mile oval at Chicagoland.