Kenseth wins again in California

Kenseth emerged as the dominant force in the second half of the race, after he claimed the lead for the first time under the third caution of the day when the leaders pitted.

His crew were unbeatable in the pits and while Kenseth made the most of driving in clean air, he could always rely on quicker stops than his rivals to remain up front.

Only Jeff Gordon was able to match Kenseth's pace on the track and he eventually got by the Roush Fenway racer on lap 196, but he then lost the lead again in the pits.

He tried to put the Daytona 500 winnner under pressure in the closing laps but in the end he had to settle for second and see Kenseth take his second win in as many races this season.

"The car did everything we needed it to do, we had great pitstops that got us in the front and clean air was obviously key there," said Kenseth, who got a perfect score after leading the most laps during the race.

"I didn't think we were going to hold Jeff off. He made a heck of run right to me and we were able to just keep digging and he slipped up one time there and we were able to just pull away from him."

Gordon was still upbeat about finishing second, having one of his most competitive outings for some time. He was the best of the Hendrick drivers during the day after grabbing the lead from teammate Jimmie Johnson on lap 78.

The reigning champion had dominated the early going but only managed ninth place, while teammates Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr retired with engine issues.

"We were awesome in every way tonight," said Gordon. "I felt like we had an opportunity to win this race today. We made just one adjustment there, we were a little loose off (the corners) and it just too much and Matt and those guys probably adjusted too and did a great job.

"They were just too tough to beat. I caught [Kenseth] but I couldn't do anything with him once I got to him."

Kyle Busch finished a distant third and never looked as quick as the leading pair. The Joe Gibbs driver was hoping to pull out a historic third win at Fontana during the weekend after taking victory in the Nationwide and Truck series races. Although he didn't achieve that, he was still able to beat other cars that looked faster than his for most of the race.

That was the case for Greg Biffle, who finished fourth while recovering from a mistake on his last pitstop, which caused him to drop out of the top ten. He ran even faster than the leaders in the closing laps but was too far behind to contend for victory.

Kurt Busch rounded up a solid day with fifth place, running at the front all day and even leading the race for two laps early on.

Denny Hamlin finished sixth ahead of last year's winner Carl Edwards, who never really looked in position to fight for victory while at least two of his teammates were. Tony Stewart was eighth in yet another impressive run for his young team finishing ahead of Johnson and a recovering Brian Vickers who rounded out the top-ten after starting from the back of the field.

The race saw several cars affected by engine issues. Besides the two Hendrick units of Martin and Earnahrdt Jr, also Aric Almirola and Scott Speed suffered engine failures. Kevin Harvick crashed due to an engine problem as well, hitting the wall hard at turn one while he was running 12th as the best of Richard Childress' cars.

In the end Juan Pablo Montoya was best among the group of Childress-powered Chevys, finishing eleventh after running consistently around the top-ten all race long.

For a moment it seemed like rain was going to bring proceedings to an early halt once again following the early finish at Daytona last week. Four of the day's five cautions were actually caused by an intermittent drizzle that didn't really affect the outcome of the race despite some gambling on the possibility of an early finish to the event.

Kenseth's win allows him to remain in the lead of the championship and his back-to-back victories match what Jeff Gordon most recently did in 1997 when he also won the first two races of the season en route to his second Cup title.

Pos  Driver               Make        Laps
 1.  Matt Kenseth         Ford        250
 2.  Jeff Gordon          Chevrolet   250
 3.  Kyle Busch           Toyota      250
 4.  Greg Biffle          Ford        250
 5.  Kurt Busch           Dodge       250
 6.  Denny Hamlin         Toyota      250
 7.  Carl Edwards         Ford        250
 8.  Tony Stewart         Chevrolet   250
 9.  Jimmie Johnson       Chevrolet   250
10.  Brian Vickers        Toyota      250
11.  Juan Montoya         Chevrolet   250
12.  Kasey Kahne          Dodge       250
13.  David Stremme        Dodge       250
14.  David Reutimann      Toyota      250
15.  Michael Waltrip      Toyota      250
16.  Jamie McMurray       Ford        250
17.  David Ragan          Ford        250
18.  Travis Kvapil        Ford        250
19.  Clint Bowyer         Chevrolet   248
20.  Bobby Labonte        Ford        248
21.  Marcos Ambrose       Toyota      248
22.  Reed Sorenson        Dodge       248
23.  Sam Hornish Jr       Dodge       248
24.  Casey Mears          Chevrolet   248
25.  Elliott Sadler       Dodge       248
26.  Joey Logano          Toyota      248
27.  Martin Truex Jr      Chevrolet   248
28.  Ryan Newman          Chevrolet   248
29.  AJ Allmendinger      Dodge       247
30.  Robby Gordon         Toyota      247
31.  John Andretti        Chevrolet   247
32.  Jeff Burton          Chevrolet   247
33.  David Gilliland      Chevrolet   246
34.  Jeremy Mayfield      Toyota      245
35.  Aric Almirola        Chevrolet   242
36.  Scott Riggs          Toyota      240
37.  Paul Menard          Ford        221
38.  Kevin Harvick        Chevrolet   207
39.  Dale Earnhardt Jr    Chevrolet   205
40.  Mark Martin          Chevrolet   179
41.  Scott Speed          Toyota      172
42.  Dave Blaney          Toyota       50
43.  Joe Nemechek         Toyota       36