After a horrible start to the Chase for Kasey Kahne last week at Loudon, Kahne needed a strong finish on Sunday in the AAA 400 on the Monster Mile at Dover to get back in the championship hunt. Kasey did his part, finishing in eighth at Dover, but still lost ground to Chase leader Mark Martin.
Although he struggled with a loose race car, Kahne still managed to run in the top-ten for most of the day. After falling as low as 18th late in the race, Kasey was running in 14th when the last caution came on lap 368. Crew Chief Kenny fancis made the call to take on only two tires to try to pick up track position during final pit stop and Kasey's No. 9 Dodge restarted in 10th after the caution. Wholesale adjustments made during that stop helped Kahne race his way up to seventh before losing a spot to teammate A.J. Allmendinger in the closing laps.
"The Budweiser Dodge ended up eighth. It wasn't what we were looking for, but we managed to get back up there a little bit," Francis said. "It was a struggle all day. We started off pretty good and then we made a wrong adjustment and really didn't figure it out until the end of the race. Once we got that, we went back the other way and the Budweiser Dodge really came around. We gave up a bunch of track position and had to charge up from 18th to eighth. At the end, the car was pretty good. It was just a little bit too loose. I wish we would have had one more pit stop to work on it."
But even the eighth place finish didn't help Kahne gain ground in the Chase standings. He entered the race at Dover 12th in the Chase standings, 161 points out of the lead and left the track still in 12th position and 189 points out of the lead.
But you take what you can get and the strong run should give Kahne momentum going into the next race on the schedule next Sunday in Kansas. Sunday's race was a definite improvement over last week's 38th place finish at Loudon. Even though Kahne lost ground on the Chase leader, he gained on some of his competitors, finishing ahead of 6 of the 12 Chase drivers.
"Our Budweiser Dodge was pretty decent today," Kahne said after the race. "We battled all day and I'm proud of all my guys for their effort today. We struggled a bit with the splitter hitting the ground all day. Kenny (Francis, crew chief) and the guys dug all day trying to get us a top-10 finish and we did. We struggled a bit on pit lane today which is unusual for our Budweiser guys. We didn't pick up as many spots in the Chase like we'd like to, but we performed well and didn't lose any ground. There's plenty of racing left in the Chase and we're going to give the guys in front of us everything we've got.
With only eigth races remaining winning the championship might be out of the question at this point. Kahne would have to run incredibly well and have some very bad luck befall several drivers at the same time to overcome a 189 point deficit. It's been done before. Jimmie Johnson was still eighth in the standings with only 6 races to go in 2006 and still won the championship.
Kahne and the No. 9 Budweiser team obviously want to finish the season as high as possible in the Chase standings, and a win within the next couple of weeks could still get Kahne back into the Chase. To do so he would not only need to get a quick win, but to follow it up with a string of top-five or top-ten finishes.
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Click here to see video of Joey Logano's big crash at Dover on NASCAR.com
Comments
We are all hoping for the best for Kasey. He has been doing a darn good job considering all that is going on over there. Now I just read that Mr. Menard is not happy with the Yates/Petty merger and is looking for a new home. What else can go wrong? RPM really needs the money and sponsorship. I hope that Kasey gets through 2010 and finds a new home, also hope that Kenny goes with him.
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