For a guy who’s supposed to be a robot, Matt Kenseth had some pretty pointed things to say following last Sunday’s Dover 400.

“We gambled for fuel, but there was really no reason to gamble because we had the best car,” Kenseth said after finishing 10th because he ran out of fuel after a stirring late-race battle for the lead with Jeff Burton. “We had the car to beat so I don’t understand how we can run out of fuel on the last lap.”

Kenseth’s frustration was apparent and understandable after he’d led 215 laps in the No. 17 Ford but, for a second time this year, had a fuel miscalculation cost him positions at the end of a race. Kenseth also ran out of fuel and finished 22nd at Chicagoland Speedway after getting bumped out of the lead by Jeff Gordon in July.

The points Kenseth lost at Chicagoland don’t matter now that he’s in the Chase for the Nextel Cup. But the points he and his Roush Racing team let get away on Sunday could wind up mattering a great deal.

If Kenseth had finished second, he’d be back on top of the standings where he started the Chase two races ago. As it is, though, he’s tied for third with Denny Hamlin, 18 points behind Burton.

But that’s where the even temper kicks in. With eight races left in the Chase, beginning with Sunday’s Banquet 400 at Kansas Speedway, Kenseth isn’t exactly running around in a blue panic worrying about what might have been.

“If we lose the championship by 25 points, I think we’ll look back at that race and say, ‘Man, that cost us the championship. We had just the dominant car and didn’t win the race,'” said Kenseth, who finished fifth in last year’s race at Kansas. “But every position matters. It might be the determining factor, but it might not be. I could go out this week and be running Lap 30 at Kansas and wreck by myself because I made a judgment error or whatever and cost us 150 points. So who knows? I have a lot of chances to make a lot more mistakes.

Matt Kenseth finished 10th in the Dover 400 after leading for 215 laps of the race.

“It’s disappointing because we let the win get away. As much as the points are, we kind of wanted that trophy and wanted to win that race. We’ve been in position to win so many races this year and those guys have done such a fantastic job of putting me there. I’m real thankful and fortunate for the races we’ve won, but we’ve also let four or five of them slip away right at the end of the race. That’s the tough part to take, but there’s a lot of racing left to do.

“We can’t do anything to fix what we did this weekend to lose those points. We can’t get those back, but we certainly can try to be smarter in the future.”

Kenseth said he didn’t think his comments after the race constituted unusually harsh criticism of longtime crew chief Robbie Reiser.

“But yet, that’s the second time that we ran out of gas this year running second,” Kenseth said. “There’s not – in my opinion – a real big excuse for doing that when you have the fastest car. That’s just a gamble that we probably didn’t need to take.

“There’s a time when you have to get your point across, but you have to do it in a constructive way too, where we learn from it and don’t do it again. If this was the first time it ever happened, you’d probably say, ‘Well, we tried something and it didn’t work,’ but this is the second time of the year and we’ve got to be able to learn from that and not make that mistake again in the final 10.”