RICHMOND, Va. -- Whether Matt Kenseth's 2009 season hit rock bottom Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway won't be known for 10 more weeks.

But it's a fact that Kenseth's 27th-place finish in the Chevy Rock & Roll 400 knocked him out of the 12-man Chase for the first time in its six-year run.

“

Really, since California it's been a downhill slide for us. We've slowly fell back in the points every week, so I can't say I'm very surprised we didn't make it. I'm really disappointed we didn't make it, but we just didn't perform good enough.

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-- MATT KENSETH

Neither Kenseth, the 2003 Cup champion in the final episode of the year-long championship format, nor his team ever came to grips with his No. 17 Ford's handling. And as a result Kenseth fell from 12th coming into Richmond -- 20 points ahead of 13th place Brian Vickers -- to 14th, two positions and 38 points behind Vickers, who was in the top 10 most of the night and ended up seventh.

"The first thing we've got to do is look at what we can do better to get our cars back in competitive form," Kenseth said. "We've got to get our cars to run and we've got to get more consistent on pit road -- but the main thing is getting the cars to run, because they're not very competitive.

"We've been working on it hard, we're just weak in a few areas. We've just been off and we haven't got it much better. On a perfect day when everything goes right, we can run about 15th, and that's just not going to cut it."

Kenseth's night on his in-car radio alternated between sarcastic barbs, such as "we've got it so jacked out of shape I can't even drive it," before moving into calm, precise analysis of what his car was doing.

But nothing he and crew chief Drew Blickensderfer tried did much to help. On the last couple restarts, when Kenseth needed to come forward, he fell back, never getting farther forward than 23rd and falling as much as two laps behind eventual race winner Denny Hamlin.

"We just struggled a lot," Kenseth said. "We had two different opportunities where if we could've had a good [pit] stop, like Dale Earnhardt Jr. did to get his lap back, we could've got our lap back and maybe got in there.

"But to be honest with you, wherever Brian and Kyle [Busch, fifth place] ran, we couldn't have ran there anyway so even if we got our lap back we were going to run 18th or 20th. We just didn't have the car to get it done."

Given that, the seeming inevitability of Kenseth falling out of the Chase didn't ease his frustration in the least.

"It's still frustrating, but I've been frustrated for three months," Kenseth said. "There's probably more stress not being in [the Chase]. The top 12 is a really good field right now and any of those guys have got a chance. But even if we'd made it in -- you guys watch us every week and you know we're not championship material right now anyways." (Continued)