He led all Winston Cup drivers with five wins last season and finished a career-best eighth in the points standings.

Yet even Matt Kenseth remains amazed with his start to the 2003 season.

“It’s just unbelievable,” he said after posting his first victory of the year Sunday at Las Vegas in the season’s third race. “I can’t believe the year we had last year, and the start to this year we’ve had.

“It’s just a huge confidence boost for our team.”

It may seem odd that a team with such success would require a boost in its confidence. But Kenseth’s No.17 Roush Racing-owned team fell victim to some off-season turnover on its pit crew — a key to the team’s strong run last year. Three members of the crew, which won the annual pit-crew competition in 2001 and 2002, went to other organizations.

“We’ve got a couple new tire changers and a new tire carrier out there,” Kenseth said. “After Rockingham (and the second race of the season) they were a little down on themselves because we didn’t quite have the pit stop we wished we would have had at the end, and it possibly took us out of contention.

“This time, they won the race for me. The will and desire for those guys to win and how hard they work makes me proud of my team.”

After three of 36 races, Kenseth is second in the standings, only three points behind Michael Waltrip. Following a 20th-place finish at Daytona, he has finishes of third and first under his belt as he enters Sunday’s Bass Pro Shops/MBNA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

“Atlanta is one of my favorite tracks because you can run on the top or the bottom depending on what your car wants,” Kenseth said.

Matt Kenseth, driver of the No. 17 car for Roush Racing, credits much of his success this season to the hard work of his award-winning pit crew.

Kenseth had top-10 finishes in both Atlanta races last season, with a fourth in this race and a ninth in the October event.

“If we can get the car right for him and get him out of the pits first, there is no reason why we can’t go for two in a row,” said Kenseth’s crew chief, Robbie Reiser.

Kenseth, like his Roush teammate Kurt Busch, has been able to build off momentum from last season. And the strong day his pit crew put in at Las Vegas calmed his team’s concerns over some of its unknowns.

“Aside from the new people on the team, we had to cut every body off every single car we had, even our favorite cars, and we had to kind of start over,” Kenseth said. “These days, what kind of makes or breaks a car is really the body, so we had to start over in that area like everyone else. We would just like to do the same job as last year.”

To repeat or improve on his victory total of last season will require hard work, Kenseth said.

Kenseth's win in last week's race at Las Vegas put him second in the 2003 points standings.

“I have to do the best job not to make the mistakes I made, and the people building the pieces that broke last year have to do a good job of trying not to break those pieces again,” said Kenseth, who finished 30th or worse 11 times in 2002.

“You really can’t do a whole lot about luck sometimes, so my goal is to be as competitive as we were last year and win a couple races again and then do a better job of not making mistakes and finish better on those days when he have 35th-place finishes.

“If we can do that, who knows what may be possible?”