By Scott Serrano

PA SportsTicker Auto Racing Editor

Matt Kenseth has continued his trademark consistency in NASCAR’s “Chase for the Nextel Cup.” Unfortunately for the 2003 champion, that consistency has been finishing in the back of the pack.

Since starting the Chase with a solid seventh-place run at New Hampshire, Kenseth ran into an uncharacteristic string of bad luck over the next four races to all but erase any title hopes for 2007.

After New Hampshire, Kenseth sat seventh in the standings, just 54 points out of the lead. But he suffered a mechanical failure at Dover while leading the race and limped to a 35th-place finish.

Accidents spoiled Kenseth’s next two races, as he was 35th again at Kansas before finishing 26th at Talladega. It was the first time he ran 26th or worse over a three-race stretch since 2001.

“Realistically, we’re probably out of it unless something major happens to a lot of cars, but we still want to try to finish as high as we can in the points,” Kenseth said. “We’re gonna go out and try to win races and lead laps and finish as high as we can every week.”

Despite leading 32 laps in the Bank of America 500 on Saturday night, Kenseth’s bad luck in the Chase continued with power problems and then several accidents at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

He finished in 34th position, 40 laps down, and dropped to 12th and dead last in the Chase standings, a distant 442 points behind leader Jeff Gordon.

“I don’t know where to start,” Kenseth said. “We had a pretty fast car (Saturday night), we had something weird that we’d run 10 laps and I would get so loose in the corner I could hardly hang onto it.

“I have absolutely no excuse. I really felt like an idiot out here tonight. I wrecked twice and it seems like we’ve wrecked for a month straight, so I really want to apologize to my fans. It’s kind of hard to stress how these guys work on this car. I really feel bad for these guys. I really let them down.”

Even more puzzling is that Kenseth’s struggles in the Chase comes on the heels of another solid if unspectacular regular season.

Through the first 26 races, he posted eight top-five finishes and 16 top-10s, including his only victory of the season in the campaign’s second race at California.

Kenseth also avoided the bad luck that has hounded him recently, finishing 27th or worse just four times before the Chase.

“Speaking of luck, we haven’t had much lately,” Kenseth said. “This Chase has been pretty frustrating for sure, because our cars have been the best they’ve been all year, but we have little to show for it.

“It’s the complete opposite of last year’s Chase – when our cars weren’t that good, but we stayed out of trouble and would finish about 12th or 15th. A lot of other people had problems last year and if we would’ve been just a little better on car performance, we could have won it all. But, this year, we can’t seem to finish a race.”