Matt Kenseth still hasn’t had the chance to get a special spot ready for his Winston Cup championship trophy.

“I’m waiting for the carpenter to come over and finish my trophy room,” Kenseth said. “I’ve got a little place I’m going to have built and stick it in the wall. It’s kind of a neat little place.”

For now, though, the trophy he earned by winning the 2003 championship sits on a counter, waiting for its new home.

“One of these days I’ll get it put away,” Kenseth said. “But it’s nice (to see). Every time I come home … when I walk in the door it’s the first thing that’s sitting there. Especially if we have a bad weekend at the track, it’s nice to see it sitting there.”

So far in 2004, Kenseth hasn’t had any bad weekends. He finished a solid ninth in the Daytona 500, then held off a charge from Kasey Kahne on the final lap to win the Subway 400 at North Carolina Speedway.

He also is just seven points behind Dale Earnhardt Jr. two races into the new season after leading the standings from the fourth race all the way to the end of the 2003 season.

The victory at Rockingham allowed him to match his victory total from all of last year, and he won with a dominance that felt even a little strange to him.

“That didn’t look like us,” Kenseth said after leading 259 of the final 304 laps at Rockingham. “Usually we don’t lead all those laps. Even if we win, we usually sneak up kind of at the end. We had such a strong car, so it felt good to do that.”

Kenseth’s first 2004 win came one race earlier than his 2003 victory at Las Vegas in that season’s third race. Now, after the Nextel Cup circuit takes the Leap Year weekend off to let the calendar catch up, he’ll go back to Las Vegas Motor Speedway looking to get a second race victory and move back into the points lead.

Matt Kenseth, in the No. 17 car, narrowly beats Kasey Kahne across the finish line to win the Subway 400. Sunday's victory at North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham, N.C., matches Kenseth's win total from 2003.

You might think Kenseth wouldn’t have wanted NASCAR’s brief off-season to end, that he would’ve like for it last a while so he could savor his accomplishment — and get that special place built in his trophy room. Instead, he has been bouncing off the walls all winter, eager to get another year going because he felt so good about the prospects for the new season.

“I’ve been driving my wife (Katie) crazy and everybody around me,” Kenseth said. “I’ve been almost giddy for the last two months just because I’ve been so looking forward to this year more so than any other year.”

The reasons, he said, were many. His team had no major personnel changes from the championship year, including among the over-the-wall pit crew that has been such a part of the team’s success.

He also anticipated that Ford teams would get a benefit from the new nose and tail NASCAR had approved for the Taurus as well as from a Roush Racing engine-building partnership with Robert Yates Racing and a new cylinder head that partnership will be working with as the season goes along. And he thinks the new rules package that includes smaller rear spoilers and softer tires can play to his team’s favor.

“Everything seemed to kind of align at the start of this year,” Kenseth said. “I thought we could go out and do these things and I think everybody at Roush is going to do a lot of great things this year. So I’ve been anxiously awaiting getting to the tracks.”

Kenseth’s responsibilities as champion have kept him busy, and in some ways, he said, he’s spent less time preparing for this season than he has for other seasons in his career. But crew chief Robbie Reiser and his team have been getting ready, and Kenseth believes the team has more cars ready to go for the early part of the year than ever.

Despite that, most preseason forecasts had Kenseth no higher than the fifth or sixth in the 2004 standings. Given the new “chase for the championship” points format, though, Kenseth said even that would be fine for him. “If we’re fifth or sixth after 26 races, that would be great,” Kenseth said.

After 26 races, the top 10 in the standings plus anyone else within 400 points of the leader will be eligible to run for the championship over the final 10 races after a reset in the standings that, had it been in effect last year, would have robbed Kenseth of all but five points of a big lead he’d accrued to that point in the season.

“I’d like to be leading the points after 26 races, but it might be fun to maybe have somebody else have a big lead — maybe have a 400-point lead — and watch them take 395 points from them instead of me.” Kenseth said. “I think that might be better for everybody to talk about. I hope we’re there. I hope we’re leading, but I hope we’re in that top 10 so we can fight for that championship at the end.”

Who knows? Maybe he’ll need spots for two Cups in his trophy room.