Matt Kenseth off to a roaring start

— -- DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- A year ago, Matt Kenseth appeared to have everything going smoothly at Joe Gibbs Racing. He had won seven races in his first season with the team in 2013. He started 2014 with a win early in a 150-mile Daytona 500 qualifying race.

For sure, it was the start of a year where he would add many more trophies to his collection and possibly challenge for his second career Cup championship.

Not.

Kenseth went the rest of 2014 without a win, a frustrating year after so much promise in 2013. He did finish second at Talladega in October, but that would be as close as he would get to a celebration.

So to start 2015 with a win -- albeit in the crash-filled exhibition Sprint Unlimited on a cool Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway -- was as much about just feeling good as it was about learning if the cars or track have changed much in the past year.

"There's nothing like winning," Kenseth said. "That's why we come out and do this every week. Getting a win was the best part for us.

"Obviously that's the best part of the night, when you're not tore up, you're sitting here talking to you guys [in the media], means you had a good day."

Only 12 of the 25 cars that started the race finished the race, not exactly something unexpected in what can often be a night filled with hard wrecks as drivers get the dust off and also learn about how the cars handle with new aerodynamic rules.

There weren't even any new aero rules for 2015, and drivers still appeared to make misjudgments in three of the four wrecks, including two that forced NASCAR officials to stop the race.

There was Brad Keselowski getting hit by Kyle Larson, Jamie McMurray having his tires lifted off the ground by Greg Biffle and Tony Stewart trying to squeeze in front of Kyle Busch. None of the moves worked, and while tempers did fly between Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano afterward, for the most part everyone just resigns themselves to the fact that the nature of restrictor-plate racing will result in many trips to the pits, a couple of trips to the garage and a possible trip to the infield medical center.

"That's what happens every year," Kenseth said. "I wasn't surprised. I've seen a lot of plate races the last 15 years.

"More end up like that than don't, especially the first race of the year, seems like."

Everyone emerged unhurt. Stewart, Biffle, Busch and Keselowski were among those who took the hardest licks. Stewart, who had offseason leg surgery, could even crack a little bit of a smile in relief that he felt fine after his crash.

"For as bad as it probably looked, it didn't feel that bad," Stewart said.

The move didn't look all that great, but Stewart said with eight laps left in the race he had to try to make a move.

"I just pushed the issue just trying to get back in line," Stewart said. "I either just didn't do it quick enough or wasn't clear when I did it. This close to the end, you've got to fight for that spot."

Those fighting for spots learned that the bottom lane worked better this year than it did a year ago, although with the possibility of temperatures 15 degrees or more warmer eight days later for the Daytona 500, anything learned could be meaningless.

Drivers expect a much more slick track for the Daytona 500 than they had Saturday night, and it already seemed to get slick midway through a tire run.

"If you have a good car, you can make any of the lines work," said 2010 Daytona 500 winner McMurray. "But the outside is still the preferred groove."

The preferred spot typically is one where a driver can have help from a teammate. Martin Truex Jr. found himself with no help in the four-lap green-flag dash to the finish as he had to settle for second behind Kenseth. Truex wasn't going to get a push from Kenseth's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Carl Edwards at the end.

Both Truex and Edwards, like Kenseth, could have really used the win. Truex was coming off a miserable first year at Furniture Row Racing that had followed his team being dissolved at Michael Waltrip Racing in the Richmond race-manipulation scandal fallout.

"It just felt really good to be out there, leading laps and mixing it up with the guys up front all night long, especially after the last year and a half being pretty rough," Truex said. "It was pretty awesome to get out there, get back in the car tonight and have a whole bunch of fun.

"[I] hate we came up short. It was just kind of two against one there at the end."

An Edwards win would have been a statement win in his first appearance at JGR after spending more than a decade at Roush Fenway Racing.

Instead, it was Kenseth making the statement. Or as much of a statement a driver can make on a restrictor-plate track with 12 cars running at the finish.

"You find you make a lot of wrong moves and you make some right moves," Kenseth said. "Sometimes you'll make the same move that was right last time [and] it will be wrong this time.

"It's hard to figure out what to do."

Sometimes things just work and you take the good times with the bad. That's the philosophy Kenseth team owner Joe Gibbs took with Kenseth and crew chief Jason Ratcliff at the end of 2014 when Gibbs opted to shuffle his crew chiefs but keep Kenseth and Ratcliff paired together.

"Obviously these two guys have worked together so well, there was no thought there [of breaking them up]," Gibbs said. "We really felt like this is one team we wanted to leave matched up."