Kenseth to hang it up for good after this season

Matt Kenseth tired of the grind when he's not winning. Like Jimmy Johnson, once you hit a certain age the wins are few and far between.
Matt Kenseth tired of the grind when he's not winning. Like Jimmy Johnson, once you hit a certain age the wins are few and far between.

Matt Kenseth has no plans to race again after this NASCAR Cup Series season.

"I have no plans to drive after this year," Kenseth tols ESPN's Bob Pockrass. "I said if I did drive, it probably would be for Roush — I don't have any plans of doing that though, either. I don't really have plans to do any driving at this point."

"At this time last year, I wasn't really looking for a ride necessarily anymore," Kenseth said when asked if this is any different than a year ago. "That's a hard question to answer because that was a different situation. I had really, really good winter months before I came back."

"There is good and bad in everything," Kenseth said. "It was good to come back and see what was going on and work with this a little bit, but it was really good being at home, too, and I'm ready to be home more.

"It's hard being gone, it's hard missing all that stuff with the kids growing up and I just don't want to miss any of it anymore."

"There's a lot of things that I enjoyed about it," Kenseth said about his return. "Certainly, I felt like we were going to perform better than we have up to this point. We've had one really good run, one decent run and the rest haven't been good at all.

"I don't want to say it's been a little bit harder, but we haven't ran as good as I thought. … We haven't made quite the headway I wish we would have made as soon, but I feel like lately we have made a lot of ground."

"You never know what's going to happen," Kenseth said. "I didn't think I would be doing this five months ago, either, so who knows?"

"I didn't really miss much about Cup racing, to be honest with you," Kenseth said. "I enjoyed being home with the kids and just doing normal things, just things that a lot of people probably dread.

"I enjoyed driving them to school, being part of their lives every day, hearing about their day every day when they get home. Today they have gymnastics meets and soccer games and I'm sitting up here in the rain at Dover. I just feel like I'm in a different place in my life."