Matt Kenseth Wins the Daytona 500

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VICTORY LANE INTERVIEWS: “It’s gonna be really wet out here because I’m crying like a baby, but I’ve just got to thank my team and thank the Lord for giving me this opportunity first of all. I’ve had a lot of great opportunities in my life – from my family getting me in racing and really DeWalt, Ford, Carhartt, USG Sheetrock, R&L Carriers, all the sponsors that we have that have stuck by us and made this happen in an up and down economy. Man, I don’t know. Winning the Daytona 500 is definitely a dream moment. It’s just an unbelievable feeling.”

WHAT DOES THIS WIN MEAN TO YOU? “After last year, winning a race means a lot to me. I’m really proud of these guys. It’s Drew’s first race as a Cup crew chief, that’s pretty cool, and Chip for sticking in here with us and really going through the deal and trying to make the team stronger – putting egos aside and making the team as strong as we can – and these guys have been fired up and working hard. It’s just unbelievable.”

WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN YOU WENT TO BED LAST NIGHT? “You just never know what’s gonna happen. We’ve had some really fast cars on the speedways in the past and I’ve just never been able to figure out how to do the right thing and today we were able to make the right moves. We got some weather, but yet we did race 400-and-some miles and we were able to pull it off. I was pretty miserable some nights because we just couldn’t make our car handle and this backup car is actually way better than the 500 car. I felt pretty good going into this morning, but I didn’t dream we were gonna win.”

YOU ARE A DAYTONA 500 WINNER. “That’s unbelievable. I’ve just really got to thank my team first of all for all the work they did this week. I put them in a hole wrecking on Thursday and they did just a tremendous job and had a great pit stop when we really needed it. I mean, that was a killer pit stop and it gave us the track position to be in position to win this thing.”

YOU SEEM TO HAVE A LOT OF EMOTION. “Yeah. Just to win a race after our year last year. I didn’t know if I was ever gonna do that again and then to pull off the Daytona 500, it’s just unbelievable. I’m just unbelievably thankful and humbled right now for all the opportunities I’ve had, really.”

WHAT ABOUT THE PASS FOR THE LEAD? “I was a little nervous because it was Elliott and then Reed and Allmendinger and all the teammates lined up there and I was able to get outside Elliott a little bit, and our car was honestly a fair amount quicker than his and I was able to get a run on him and get by him.”

WERE YOU RACING HARDER BECAUSE YOU KNEW THE RAIN WAS COMING? “Man, we raced hard all day. Thanks to all the fans that came out to watch us. It’s a great pleasure to race in front of the greatest race fans in the world. We just raced hard the whole time. You knew it was down to crunch time, but to be honest with you, you’re almost a little more careful with your moves with the rain coming, so I didn’t want to make the wrong move and get hung out and finish in the back, either. So I felt like I had a good enough run there and Dale Jr. and Ryan Newman and a couple of those lapped cars were real fast when they were on the bottom, so I felt pretty good about getting down in front of them.”