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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Eight months ago, before a NASCAR Sprint Cup race in Indianapolis, Matt Kenseth was hanging out in his motorcoach with the eldest of his three young daughters\u2014a precocious six-year-old named Kaylin. She has the firmest grasp of what daddy does for a living, asks a &lt;em&gt;ton &lt;/em&gt;of questions. She\u2019s always wanting to know who finished last, who won and, naturally, where her daddy wound up\u2014although she\u2019s hardly as results-driven as his employer, Joe Gibbs Racing. \u201CI could finish ninth,\u201D says the 44-year-old Kenseth, \u201Cand she\u2019ll be like, \u2018Daddy, great job finishing ninth! I could do the worst job in the world, and my girls\u2019d figure out a way to make me feel a little bit better about it.\u2019\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kaylin\u2019s always wanting to know who\u2019s &lt;em&gt;going&lt;/em&gt; to win. Before the Indy race she prodded her old man for yet another prediction. Kenseth, though, wasn\u2019t especially inclined to pick himself. After all, he\u2019s from Wisconsin. (And humblebragging is a criminal misdemeanor in the Midwest, isn\u2019t it?) Also, he had notched only one victory in his last 63 starts to that point\u2014a fruitless streak that can be hell on a man\u2019s confidence.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So you can imagine what an out-of-body experience it was for Kenseth to hear himself say to his little towhead, \u201CYou know what, Kaylin? I really think we\u2019re gonna win this weekend!\u201D&amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here\u2019s the thing about kids: With knowledge comes terrifying bluntness. Kaylin, bless her, can\u2019t be anything but unsparing. \u201CNo dad, seriously,\u201D she deadpanned, \u201Cwho do you think is gonna win?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201C&lt;em&gt;Seriously&lt;/em&gt;,\u201D Kenseth insisted, despite never, in 15 tries, having grabbed a checkered flag at the Brickyard. \u201CI think we\u2019re gonna. I feel like this might be our weekend!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CSeriously dad, who..?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On and on this went until duty mercifully called Kenseth back to the track, where he ultimately brought the No. 20 car home in seventh. So, no, his prediction did not come to pass that weekend. But his Spidey sense that his team was on the cusp of flush times again was not altogether wrong. The very next weekend he won at Pocono, then again two weeks later at Michigan, then yet again three weeks after that in the NASCAR regular-season finale at Richmond. This made for quite a bit of daddy-daughter time in Victory Lane. \u201CIt definitely makes the celebration more fun,\u201D Kenseth says.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;With four wins in his column, a total only his JGR teammate Kyle Busch had matched to that point, Kenseth stamped himself as a favorite to win the Cup championship\u2014something he\u2019d only done once before, in 2003, well before Kaylin and her sisters were born. In fact, after posting a fifth win in the second Chase race at Loudon, it seemed as if Kenseth might cruise. But then in the second-round transfer race at Kansas, his fortunes turned. (Or were they pushed? Let\u2019s circle back to this later \u2026)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2016, hard luck has followed Kenseth like so much wake turbulence. In each of his six races to date he hasn\u2019t just finished worse than he\u2019s started (with an average position of 18.5 versus 8.8), but in the flukiest ways too. The baffling streak began at Daytona. There Kenseth led with a half lap left until he memorably moved up the track to block his charging teammate Denny Hamlin and spiraled, on older rubber, down to 14th. (\u201CI let my team down,\u201D Kenseth said afterward.)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;His next race in Atlanta was an even bigger disaster. After a so-so qualifying (13th), Kenseth rallied to lead 47 laps and position himself for a win. But then a third of the way through the race, he was slapped with a flagrant foul\u2014a black flag. Really, it was a team foul, a ticky-tack citation for an illegal pit stop. In a bid to shave a few tenths off the service time,&amp;nbsp;Kenseth\u2019s fueler dropped a wrench off for another crewmember before topping off the No. 20 car.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The move, a textbook timesaver, was interpreted as unsafe according to the latest edition of the rulebook. What\u2019s more, it was just the sort of move that NASCAR\u2019s two-year-old pit road monitoring system was designed to target. If the system has a blind spot, though, it\u2019s that it doesn\u2019t make it easy for folks on the ground to challenge these findings\u2014what with so many pit road officials hiding in the race tower nowadays.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Still, Jason Ratcliff, the No. 20 car\u2019s undeterred crew chief, found someone to get into an argument with anyway. While he made his point, Kenseth kept circling the hot, slick track unawares, the setting sun washing out his view of the flag stand. By the time word reached him in the cockpit, his penalty had snowballed into a two-lap deficit\u2014which doomed him to a 19th-place finish. \u201CObviously, if you had to do it over,\u201D says Kenseth, \u201Cyou\u2019d just bite the bullet whether you agree with the penalty or not, serve it and continue on.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It seemed as if he\u2019d get off the schneid in Las Vegas\u2014where he had won three times before, in 2013 most recently for Gibbs. But while running fifth with 43 laps to go Kenseth fishtailed the No. 20 car on a restart, got rear-ended by rookie Chase Elliott and finished 37th.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then of course two weeks later there was Martinsville, the latest of Kenseth\u2019s tough losses. This after he had seemingly improved his chances of victory by uniting with his Gibbs teammates in a kind of gentlemen\u2019s agreement\u2014not an uncommon occurrence there, where the bottom groove is tackiest. \u201CWhen teammates are running 1-2,\u201D explains Steve Letarte, a Cup crew chief turned NBCSN analyst, \u201Cthey know that the outside is a non-preferred groove.\u201D So the leader takes it and the second-position car, on the inside, holds up traffic until the leader overtakes him. \u201CThat allows the teammates to stay first and second and both have the line at the bottom,\u201D Letarte continues. \u201CAnd why that works very, very well is when you get to the end of the race, the rows behind you have the opportunity to really push the issue into turn one and perhaps even make contact to move people up the racetrack.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Gibbs pilots, who have been willing collaborators all season (at Daytona, most notably), made a deal to hold off on their internecine rivalry until there were 10 laps left. \u201CI\u2019ve got just awesome teammates that work hard to not only win races on their own, but if they can\u2019t win they want a JGR car to win,\u201D says Kenseth. \u201CWe always try to help each other if we can without hurting our own effort.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At the 11 to-go mark Kenseth was in &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; ideal spot, running second to Busch heading into a final restart. But instead of easing down the road, to the low groove, Kenseth remained stranded on the inferior line up top while Busch tucked in on the left-hand side. When the green flag flew again, Busch sped off while Kenseth struggled to fall in behind and was quickly swallowed up by the pack. Busch claimed the checkers. Kenseth finished 15th.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not that he has any hard feelings about it. \u201CIt\u2019s not expected or required to ever help during the race,\u201D says Kenseth, still well above the Chase cutoff\u201414th&amp;nbsp;on the leader board. \u201CYou\u2019re the leader. You work hard to be the leader. It\u2019s your prerogative to start in whichever lane you want. Kyle, he\u2019s good at restarts. Obviously I wish I would\u2019ve gotten a better start and could\u2019ve been on the bottom. But when you look at it we were right on him probably getting ready to pass him when the caution came out. The smarter thing to do to try to win the race was not to put the car you think\u2019s a little better than yours right behind you.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This brand of perspective is typical of Kenseth, one of the sport\u2019s true gentlemen. Never mind that a pair of fang-bearing incidents has turned him into something of a heel. In the first he jumped Brad Keselowski after a 2014 Chase race in Charlotte. In the second, which occurred at Martinsville just five months ago, he T-boned race leader Joey Logano right out of the Chase\u2014an apparent payback strike for Logano wiping him out two races earlier in Kansas. (So it wasn\u2019t just bad luck there, then \u2026)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not surprisingly, the track referenced that 2015 incident often while drawing a crowd to the \u201916 race. This despite the fact that Kenseth was parked for two races after going HAM. The irony of this didn\u2019t upset him much, though. The track promoter was doing what he had to do, just as Kenseth had in the heat of battle. \u201CI think that you try to respect your competitors and race a certain way, and you hope to get that same treatment back,\u201D he says. \u201CBut when conditions on the ground change, you\u2019ve gotta be able to change with that. You can\u2019t be a doormat.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CLast year I felt like I got ran over and taken out of the Chase. And if you just smile and shrug it off and continue about your business, what\u2019s going to stop somebody different from doing it the next race? Or the next year? There\u2019s always a point where you\u2019ve gotta make the decision: Am I going to stop this? How am I gonna stop this? Is there a way we can reason this out and understand? Was it partially my fault? Do we need to come together, come up with a conclusion? What do you need to do?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CNobody likes to be in those spots. You never want to be doing those things. You always want to get along with everybody the very best you can, race as fair as you can. But like I say, there\u2019s also that time at that place where you\u2019ve gotta put your foot down and be like, enough\u2019s enough.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He\u2019s likewise had it with the losing streak that ensued and still endures. He hopes to put a stop to it this weekend at Texas. Still, even though he is a two-time winner there, he remains even-keeled about his chances. \u201CI probably don\u2019t have the confidence that I had going there three or four years ago,\u201D he says. \u201CBut I really like the track, and I look forward to the challenge of trying to get it all put together.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, his season hasn\u2019t gone according to plan. But that\u2019s only because expectations for him are sky high to begin with. \u201CIf you took the same results and gave em to Paul Menard,\u201D says Letarte, \u201Cyou\u2019d probably call it a good year. There are a lot of expectations on the No. 20 because his teammate [Busch] is the defending champion, because the No. 11 [Hamlin] won the Daytona 500. But the most important part of any equation is speed, and the No. 20 has that.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kenseth also has an uncanny knack for shrugging off complications and staying the course\u2014a trait that will always keep him in title contention. And in the unlikely event he strays? He\u2019s got his real-talking daughter Kaylin, easily his most honest critic, to put him back in place. Seriously.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/racing/2016/04/08/nascar-matt-kenseth-struggles>