NASCAR at Texas Motor Speedway: Matt Kenseth Takes Checkered Flag Saturday Night

Jack Roush wore a cowboy hat and a grin into the Texas Motor Speedway media center on Saturday night, which is a pretty good sign his Roush Fenway Racing team had a great race.

“I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to do in 2011,” Roush said, crediting his team’s engineering, new Ford nose and FR9 engines.

Nancy Sterling, the mother of NASCAR driver Carl Edwards, was just trying to be nice. She cooked up her son a rice and beans dish on Friday night, and Edwards ate it on Saturday morning before the Texas Motor Speedway race.

Without going into too many details, it didn’t go so well.

Ho-hum. Another race, another top-10 finish for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Earnhardt Jr. finished ninth at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday night, marking his sixth straight result of 12th or higher. That’s the longest such streak of consistent finishes for NASCAR’s most popular driver since he had seven in a row during March/April 2008 – his first season with Hendrick Motorsports.

Matt Kenseth had what appeared to be the best car at Texas Motor Speedway and it paid off as he came around to take the checkered flag during Saturday night’s Samsung Mobile 500. Kurt Busch was forced to pit with just 15 laps to go, clearing the way for Kenseth down the stretch. An extended green-flag run to end the race led to problems for some, including pit road problems for one potential leader.

Clint Bowyer finished second and Carl Edwards finished third, but it was all Kenseth as the race wound down. Edwards had one of the more humorous stories, saying he was all hopped up on Pepto Bismol after having stomach problems for much of the day. In a post-race interview, Edwards attributed his issues to his mother’s home cooking, but had a laugh about it.

Start time: The command to start engines will be given by retired U.S. Army Master Aviator Gary Linfoot at 7:38 p.m. Eastern time (6:38 local). The actual start time of the race is estimated to be 7:46:30. Yep, you read that right – the estimated green flag time is 30 seconds past 7:46. Pretty specific, isn’t it? An executive from Sprint is waving the green flag tonight.

Race name/distance: The race is called the Samsung Mobile 500, although it’s actually not 500 miles. The real distance of the race is 501 miles, which is the result of 334 laps around the 1.5-mile Texas track.

NASCAR driver Carl Edwards flies around these days in a Citation jet, but back when he first started flying, he bought a single-engine Saratoga that was purplish-pink in color.

And when he was learning the ropes of what it took to be a pilot, he made a mistake one day.

Kasey Kahne led the final Sprint Cup Series practice on Friday afternoon at Texas Motor Speedway, topping the charts with a fast lap of 183.899 mph.

Kahne bested Paul Menard (183.892) in a 90-minute practice session that saw many drivers work only on race trim and not the upcoming qualifying session later this evening.

David Ragan jumped to the top of the speed charts with just one minute remaining in Thursday’s lone Sprint Cup Series practice at Texas Motor Speedway and ended up No. 1 when the session concluded.

Ragan was among the drivers who switched over to qualifying trim late in the day after spending most of the 90-minute practice in race trim, and it paid off with a lap of 185.818 mph.

Kevin Harvick offered this little tidbit today at Texas Motor Speedway on his mentality heading into a race weekend. I thought it was pretty interesting.

Check it out:

Jeff Burton isn’t on this week’s NASCAR media availability schedule again – and all of us are worse off for it.

A few years ago, NASCAR smartly instituted what were then called “Behind the hauler chats.” The top 10 drivers (that number later increased to 12) were to have a 15-minute media session every week.

For better or worse, the married version of Kyle Busch is a different guy than many NASCAR fans are used to seeing. So is Busch’s effort to be a better sport and show the nicer side of his personality a good thing?

It depends who you ask. Reporters get tweets every day from fans who say they are starting to come around on Busch after previously not liking him; others, though, say they liked him the old way.

This weekend’s NASCAR schedule at Texas Motor Speedway is fairly unusual – and not just because it’s a Saturday night race for the first time in the track’s history.

The practice and qualifying schedule is a bit wacky as well. Qualifying is on Friday night, and there are only two Sprint Cup Series practice sessions: One on Thursday, one on Friday.

The last image we had of Texas Motor Speedway was of a smiling Denny Hamlin and his confident crew chief Mike Ford, seemingly well on their way to the Sprint Cup Series championship.

Hamlin left Texas as the Chase points leader last fall, and it appeared defending champion Jimmie Johnson was on the ropes. Ford quickly took the opportunity to take jabs at Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus, claiming the 11 team rattled the 48.