By alley - Apr 17, 2016, 4:35 PM ET

NASCAR: Tire blowouts plague Kenseth

The nightmarish start to Matt Kenseth's 2016 season continued on Sunday at Bristol Motor Speedway with a series of tire failures during the Food City 500.

The first incident occurred on lap 187 while he was leading and it sent him hard into the Turn 2 wall. The resulting pit stop dropped him to 25th for the restart but that wasn't the end of his problems. The 2003 champion worked his way up to third by lap 323 when he once again blew a right front and slapped the Turn 3 wall.

Kenseth immediately pulled behind the wall and lost over 30 laps while his car underwent repairs. While waiting, Kenseth was unable to offer any reason as to what happened. He was one of three Joe Gibbs Racing drivers to have tire issues during the first half of the race, alongside Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin.

"We just keep blowing right front tires and I don't know why," Kenseth said. "The first one was a little confusing. I knew I blew a right front, but I thought they were telling me it wasn't flat so I was a little confused. This last one just blew a lot earlier and the angle was a lot worse hitting the wall."

Kenseth wasn't sure if the problem was due to a shared setup amongst the Gibbs camp.

"I don't know, because I'm not a tire expert and I'm not a setup guy," Kenseth said. "I don't think we're doing anything much different than we've ever done here. Same tire and pretty similar setups that we always run. No major handling problems so I honestly don't know."

Kenseth has led laps in all but one Sprint Cup race this season, but has only a single top-10 finish – a seventh at Phoenix to show for it. The result knocked him out of the top-16 in the championship standings and off the provisional Chase grid.