At 50, NASCAR Hall-of-Famer Matt Kenseth Returns to Short-Track Roots

• Before Matt Kenseth was a star in the NASCAR Cup Series, the Wisconsin native was a very successful short track driver in the Midwest.

• After roughly a 25-year absence, for the next three weekends the 2003 NASCAR Cup champion will be back racing competitively on short tracks.

• In addition, Kenseth, 50, makes his Camping World SRX Series debut this Saturday at Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville (8 p.m. ET on CBS).

In a sense, former NASCAR star Matt Kenseth is returning back to his racing roots.

The Wisconsin native was a very successful short track driver in the Midwest before he followed fellow Badger State natives Alan Kulwicki and Dave Marcis to find fame and fortune in the world of NASCAR.

The Cambridge, Wisconsin native was dominant at numerous short tracks around the Midwest during his short track days, including winning multiple championships at Madison International Speedway, Wisconsin International Raceway and Slinger Superspeedway (where he’ll race next Tuesday, July 12, in the annual Slinger Nationals).

After roughly a 25-year absence, for the next three weekends the 2003 NASCAR Cup champion will be back racing competitively on short tracks as he makes his Camping World SRX Series debut this Saturday at Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville (8 p.m. ET on CBS).

“I'm looking forward to going to Nashville,” Kenseth said. “I talked to Ray and Tony (series co-founders Ray Evernham and Tony Stewart) and Greg (Biffle) about the series and thought it was a great idea. I was excited about it.

“(I’ll) try these three races and see how it goes. It looks fun on TV and all the people I've talked to that have participated in it all say it's a lot of fun and real competitive. So I’m looking forward to getting on the track.”

Going back to his short track days, Kenseth moved up through the ranks of the American Speed Association and other series before joining forces with former racing rival Robbie Reiser in the then-NASCAR Busch Series. Reiser was the crew chief and Kenseth was behind the wheel.

The duo would go on to finish second and third in 1998 and 1999, respectively, before moving together to the Cup Series in 2000, with Kenseth earning Rookie of the Year honors. From that point, Kenseth would go on to win 39 Cup races, including two Daytona 500s, as well as the final Winston Cup title in 2003.

“The time goes by and in a hurry,” Kenseth said of his career. “It feels like it was not really all that long ago when we were doing that (short track racing).

“In another way, it seems like a long time ago, but in most ways it doesn't. So it's kind of fun to know that you're away from professional full-time driving, to kind of look back and think about some of those great moments and things that have happened throughout my career.”

Kenseth thought 2018, when he competed in just 15 races, would be the last season of his Cup career. But when Kyle Larson was suspended for the final 32 races of the season by NASCAR in 2020 for using a racial slur in an online race, Kenseth was brought in to do the remainder of the season by team owner Chip Ganassi to replace Larson.

These days, Kenseth spends most of his time with his family and has no desire to return to racing full-time. But SRX presented an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

“I am not looking for a set schedule or to be a professional race car driver again,” Kenseth said. “That ship has kind of sailed. But (SRX) is definitely intriguing. I think it'll be a lot of fun and I think it'll be very competitive.

“You're going to have to bring your A game to be able to compete with all these guys. You can see when you watch them on TV, there’s definitely nothing staged about it. They're racing really, really hard. So I know that it's going to be very competitive. And that'll be fun for me to get in there and challenge myself and see how I can do.”

Kenseth compares SRX to the former IROC Series, which he won the championship in 2004.

“It has a lot of similarities to the old IROC series, which I always really enjoyed racing in, because you could race against a lot of guys that you weren't on a track with,” Kenseth said. “It's fun to go back and race with Greg (Biffle) and Ryan (Newman) and Tony (Stewart), and the guys that you're familiar with.

“But it's also really fun to go race against people that you're not familiar with that have had a lot of success in different forms of motorsport. That's the part that's always the most interesting to me.

“I remember I thought it was the coolest thing ever when I got to race against (sprint car legend) Steve Kinser when he raced in the IROC series, watching him win all the sprint car races and how famous he was and how good he was. So that's part of that. It's fun to race against them all, don’t get me wrong, but certainly it's more intriguing, I think, to race against some of the people that you have never shared a racetrack with.”

This past May, the now-50-year-old Kenseth was selected for induction next January into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

“That was really neat and a big honor, especially when I look at the list of all the people that were nominated,” Kenseth said. “It’s my opinion there were people on that list probably more deserving than me, so it's a big honor to be in there. I mean, obviously, if the sport that you're involved in has a Hall of Fame, that's where you want to end up someday. So it's neat. I'm looking forward to all the festivities and to be part of that pretty elite group.”

Kenseth is also looking forward to the final two races of the six-week, six-race SRX schedule, as both will be on dirt at Ken Schrader’s Federated Auto Parts Speedway in Missouri and the Dave Blaney co-owned Sharon Speedway in Ohio.

Up to now, the only dirt races Kenseth has competed in were the former Prelude to A Dream events at Tony Stewart’s Eldora Raceway.

“I’ve never really raced a real race on dirt, so I'm looking forward to that,” Kenseth said. “It's something that has intrigued me. Driving that dirt late model at Eldora was so much fun and something that I wish I would have done a little bit more in my career when I started out.”

Follow Autoweek contributor Jerry Bonkowski on Twitter @JerryBonkowski