CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- I really can't believe we got out of Loudon with a top 10.

Actually, before the race on Sunday, my crew chief, Robbie Reiser, and my engineer, Chip Bolin, and I were talking and we all agreed that a top 10 would be a heck of a day for us.

It wasn't pretty, but it was about the best that we could do, and that's all you can ask for.

We've had some recurring brake problems throughout the year and Sunday was no different. I don't know why, but we've had those issues at a lot of flat tracks this year.

Hopefully, we can get that figured out by the time we get to Martinsville. I would hate to end up with the same results as we had there in April, when the brakes finally left us with just under 10 to go and that ended up being our only DNF of the season.

Let me go ahead and say this again, because I know someone will ask me this week -- No, I do not think that just because Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch both had bad days at Loudon that they are out of it.

That's absurd.

Kurt Busch finished 42nd at Atlanta in the 2004 Chase and still won the championship. In my opinion, you can have one bad finish and still make up ground.

Look at Jimmie in 2004 -- he had a couple of bad finishes at the start of the Chase, then won something like three or four races toward the end and came close to winning it all. My point is, if you get hot and start knocking off top fives, you can make up a lot of ground in a hurry.

This week is Dover and a track that is pretty special to me. My first Cup start was there in '98 when I filled in for Bill Elliott, whose father had just passed away. It was really cool because no one had ever heard of me.

The car was great and we ended up finishing sixth in my first Cup start! I won a couple of Busch races there with Robbie back when no one had heard of either of us. Then, we finally broke through with a Cup win there this past June and it was one of the best days of my career.

I always said that Dover was my favorite track, but when I would say that, it seemed like something bad would happen to us there. So, since we're going there this weekend, for the record: I really don't like Dover and I'm dreading going back.

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Kenseth also answered questions from AP Auto Racing Writer Jenna Fryer:

Q: What's made Harvick so good of late? There was a report the other night -- which both NASCAR and Richard Childress Racing quickly shot down -- that the RCR cars have some sort of performance advantage. What's your take?

A: I don't know much about that. Certainly inspection is pretty good about always checking for stuff. But the Childress cars have been running really good everywhere, especially at tracks like New Hampshire and Phoenix, so I expected them to be good. And Kevin has been with (crew chief) Todd (Berrier) for a long time, so they've really got it all together.

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Q: You got to fulfill a dream of yours by appearing on the David Letterman Show. Was it everything you imagined it would be?

A: It was fun, and I did always want to be on there, but it wasn't at all what I expected. We had to be there like three hours before, and they stuck us down in this room in the basement that was full of pipes. It was supposedly their "green room'' but The Rock was also on the show that night and he was never in that green room. So basically, we sat down in this room full of pipes for three hours, then got to be on the show for one minute, and I never got to meet Letterman, either. I shook his hand, that was it.

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Q: You've got a few days off before you head to Dover this weekend, and you are spending it at your cabin in the woods of Wisconsin. How is that going?

A: It's good. My buddy came over yesterday and we watched the Monday night football game, now we're just kind of hanging around outside in the woods. It's a nice cold day and we're out here cutting down trees and relaxing.

Q: You cut down trees? Do you yell "Timber!'' as they fall?

A: No way. If you aren't smart enough to look up and see a big tree falling on you, that's not my problem.