Same place, same situation, hopefully same results.

That's Matt Kenseth's mindset and game plan as he heads into Sunday's Samsung/Radio Shack 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

It was a year ago that Kenseth found himself in exactly the same situation as he does this weekend. He already had one win under his belt (at Rockingham last year, at Las Vegas this year), was looking to become the first multi-race winner of the season ... and went out and did just that at the 1½-mile Fort Worth oval.

But there's one big difference this year: last year at this time Kenseth was chasing Sterling Marlin for the points lead. Marlin would continue to maintain a stranglehold on the standings for 25 of the first 26 weeks in the 2002 campaign before his season eventually was cut short by injury with seven races left.

Fast forward to today, and everyone is chasing Kenseth, who holds a 138-point edge over Kurt Busch in the Winston Cup standings. It's a place Kenseth has been in for the last three weeks, and one he doesn't intend on relinquishing very easily.

"Obviously, we feel great about the start we've had this year," Kenseth said. "We've had really fast cars every week, and except for Daytona, we've been able to get real good finishes out of it every week. So far, everything has gone our way, but it's a really long season and we just have to keep working at it."

Indeed, Kenseth's season scorecard thus far has been off the charts compared to every other driver when it comes to having that elusive intangible called consistency.

After finishing 20th in the season-opening Daytona 500, Kenseth has been the hottest driver on the Winston Cup circuit, with four top-five finishes, and one other top-10 showing. He's been third at Rockingham (N.C.), first at Las Vegas, fourth at Atlanta, eighth at Darlington (S.C.) and second this past Sunday at Bristol (Tenn.).

"Consistency is what it takes," Kenseth said. "Being as competitive as we are right now, but still being consistent, we can't have bad finishes. It feels great to be where we're at in the points right now, but it's still very, very early in the year. It's nothing to get too excited about. We still have 30 races to go and there's a lot of racing left to do. It's great we've had a great start, but it's a real long way and a lot of things can happen between now and the middle of November, so we just have to keep working at it."

	Kenseth won at Texas last season.

Kenseth worked hard to win last year's race at Texas. He started back in the field in 31st position, but methodically meandered his way up through the pack, eventually leading 85 of the last 92 laps, including the last 24, holding off a hard-charging Jeff Gordon by .888 seconds to capture the checkered flag.

Texas is one of Kenseth's favorite tracks, not just because of last season's win, but because of its 1½-mile layout.

"There's certain tracks where you might have a little more confidence or maybe you like to go to more than others, and Texas is definitely one of them for me," he said. "But, we also know that each race is equally as important, to put the same effort into every race. There's no single race that we try harder than any other race. We just go and do the best we can every week. But, it's a race I look forward to going to, and running our Busch Series car there, as well. It's always a fun weekend to go there, it's a great facility, we always get great crowds out there and it's a fun track to race at."

One of the questions Kenseth has been asked repeatedly over the last few weeks since he took over the top spot in the standings is whether he can repeat his five-win achievement of last season. And, taking that a step further, can he ultimately win the championship, instead of finishing what some considered a disappointing eighth-place at the end of last season, despite his quintet of wins.

"There's absolutely nothing discouraging about winning five Winston Cup races in a year in this day and age," Kenseth said. "I don't care who you ask, nobody expected us to be that competitive going into last year, to win all those races and to run good each and every week like we did. So, I was extremely happy with last year. I don't think we could have asked for the year to be any better. We looked over the year, tried to take things from it for this year to improve on to finish higher in the points and to be more consistent, but we're definitely very happy with the way things went last year.

"Can we win five races again this year (or maybe even more)? You never know. I don't know what to expect in this sport. I wouldn't be shocked if we didn't win another race this year, but I also wouldn't be shocked if we won another three or four races, either. I just don't know. Right now, our cars are very, very competitive. We've had cars fast enough that if everything went right, we could have won races this year almost every week so far, except for maybe one or two weeks where we didn't quite perform at that level. But other than that, we've had real fast cars and have been a threat to win. So, I feel good about that and feel good about going to Texas. Hopefully we can just remain competitive and put ourselves in good positions."

Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at Motorsportwriter@Yahoo.com.