Kenseth

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Matt Kenseth started the second half of the season as strong as he ran through the first part of it, widening his lead in the point standings with a sixth-place finish in the Pepsi 400 on Saturday night.

That's bad news for his competitors: Restrictor-plate racing has normally been Kenseth's weak spot. But his strong showing at Daytona International Speedway proved Kenseth is quite serious about his bid for his first Winston Cup title.

"Restrictor-plate racing is where we usually struggle," Kenseth said. "But tonight I felt like we performed pretty well. It was a great night for us."

Kenseth started 37th after a poor qualifying run forced his Roush Racing team to use a provisional to make the field. But he sliced his way through the field, led one time for 10 laps, and held on for a solid finish.

Kenseth, who climbed to the top of the standings after the fourth race of the season, has a 180-point lead over Dale Earnhardt Jr. The Wisconsin driver has built his lead with a string of 13 top-10 finishes. Two of them have come at restrictor-plate tracks - he finished ninth at Talladega in April.

"I'm pretty happy with all three plate races so far this season," he said. "In the spring here we were running top five and I messed up with a call to pit and then the rain came and we finished 20th. And we were running for the win at Talladega with two laps to go and got shuffled back and ended up ninth."

Kenseth possibly could have run for the win on Saturday night but because of the points race, didn't want to gamble with fuel strategy. When caution came out on lap 74, some cars decided not to stop for fuel while others came in for a splash of gas.

Greg Biffle, Kenseth's rookie teammate at Roush Racing, went in for gas and stretched that fuel mileage strategy into his first Winston Cup win.

But Kenseth couldn't stretch anything and risk taking a massive hit in the standings, so he made a last-ditch stop for fuel with four laps to go in the race.

"In Biffle's situation, he was going to win the race if he didn't run out of gas," Kenseth said. "If he ran out of gas, he was probably going to finish 15th or 20th. We couldn't afford to gamble a top 10 away and finish 20th. We were just too close to making it.

"But it all worked out perfect. It was a great night for us."