---

Matt Kenseth has been around racing long enough to know that things weren't always going to go as well as they started this season.

But neither did he expect them to fall apart so fast.

Some fans may need a reminder that Kenseth actually won the first two races of the 2009 season, including his first Daytona 500 win.

"It does seem like a long time ago," the 2003 Sprint Cup Series champion said.

It's no wonder.

After starting the season with a bang, his No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing team stumbled a bit but was still fifth in the series standings after the fourth race, at Atlanta.

Since then, it's been downhill fast. He's finished no better than 13th - and that came last Saturday at Richmond, Va. - in five of his past six races.

Entering Saturday night's Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway, Kenseth maintains a tenuous hold on the 12th spot in points, the cutoff to make the Chase for the Sprint Cup. He is 31 points ahead of 13th place David Reutimann.

Kenseth said he has been surprised about how much he and his team have struggled since the win at California.

"We've been really far off at a lot of places. Some other places we've been pretty good and just had dumb, bad luck," he said. "When we have run decent and put ourselves in position, we've had other problems.

"We've had pit road problems and stuff like that, which is very uncharacteristic for our team and kind of surprising, and when we haven't had any problems on pit road and things have gone smooth, we haven't run good enough to be a contender since week No. 2.

"It's been a little frustrating."

The good news for Kenseth?

He already knows his team is capable of winning races. And although he has never won at Darlington, he hasn't finished worse than seventh in his past three races at the historic track.

"Everybody has been working together and trying to make stuff better. We realized it wasn't going to be like it was the first couple of weeks. We realized it wasn't going to carry on like that all the time," Kenseth said.

"Things just don't go that smooth all the time, but we probably didn't realize it was going to be this difficult to get some consistency back, either."

So, where do Kenseth and his team go from here to at least cement their position in the Chase, if not return to Victory Lane?

"When your performance is good or above average, it makes the rest of it a little easier. When your performance is above average, you can afford to maybe slip up a little on pit road or maybe not get in your pit stall exactly like or a flat tire and still recover from it," he said.

"But when your performance is average at best, you have to be absolutely perfect on pit road, getting on and off pit road and on the track - all that stuff - to get any kind of good finish out of it.

"You've got to have it all going on."[[In-content Ad]]

---