Kenseth's strong weekend doesn't mean Roush has turned corner

Remember when Matt Kenseth and Drew Blickensderfer were the stars of the Sprint Cup season? It must seem like an eternity ago to the veteran driver and first-year crew chief of Roush Fenway Racing's No. 17 Ford since they opened 2009 with victories at Daytona and the Auto Club Speedway in California.

Kenseth and Blickensderfer put together their best finish in the last 26 races at Dover on Sunday, taking third on the strength of good restarts and positions gained on pit stops. It was Kenseth's first top-five since the first stop in Dover, when he was fourth, and only the fifth top-five of his season. The last year Kenseth had fewer top-fives was in '01, with four.

Dover was relief from the rough waters, a port in the storm of the first season in which Kenseth didn't made the Chase in its six years. But was it a sign of a return of the team's ability to run with Hendrick's Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon? Probably not, which isn't good news for Greg Biffle and Carl Edwards, his Roush Fenway teammates who are in the Chase.

Kenseth doesn't close the door on Biffle or Edwards' chances of winning the championship, but they'd have to find speed that hasn't been there all season. Neither has won a race in '09.

"Just on speed, without any luck or anything changing, you never know," Kenseth said. "There are eight races left. That's a ton of races. That's a lot of points ... to be made. So, anything can happen. But, just on speed, do I think one of our company cars can win? No, I don't. But, anything can happen and they might be able to get that fixed and get that turned around."

Roush Fenway, in fact, hasn't won a race since Kenseth won in California in the second race of the season. Kenseth knows he's being optimistic in thinking the team can suddenly discover a magic formula to challenge the Hendrick cars.

"It wasn't a big surprise to me that we missed the Chase -- I saw it coming for three months," Kenseth explained. "We haven't been performing, the whole company hasn't been performing the way it needs to win a championship, and that's not being negative or anything, it's just obvious. Everybody can see that. So it shouldn't really be a surprise, you know, where they're [Biffle, Edwards] at, considering the results we've had all year.

"You don't just turn it around overnight, so everybody at Roush Fenway is working really hard to get the cars better, to be competitive. We got behind a little and we're working hard to get that back. So, I'd like to say it's a step in the right direction. We had really good pit stops. Our car was reasonable, it wasn't blazing fast, and we were able to get a good finish."

Kenseth started 23rd at Dover. He gained 10 spots through pit stops and 10 on restarts. Kenseth is really good at the Monster Mile. It was the 2003 Cup champion's fourth straight top-five finish. He cracked the top-10 near the halfway point of the 400-lap race, ran in the top-five for the final 122 and climbed as high as second before Martin passed him near the end.

"It ended up being really good," Kenseth said. "We didn't qualify very good, but we were really happy with our car. When the race started, I didn't think we were quite as good as we were [Saturday in practice], but we were able to have really good pit stops. We got most of our position through pit stops and restarts. I kept getting in the proper lane on restarts and my car would run for two laps, and then I'd get two or three spots, and you had to do it right there because there weren't many people that could pass very good. So, we had a nice, solid day on pit road, and the car was OK, also, and I was able to get a decent finish out of it."