It is unknown whether Budweiser will follow Kasey Kahne to Hendrick Motorsports. (Photo: Getty Images)

“I wouldn’t say my car is any different than it was last year,” he said. “I think the Ford engine runs a little better than what we had last year (when the team ran Dodges), and that’s nice, but as far as balance and going and leading laps or running first, second, third, we’re not there. Hopefully, we can get there with the group of people that we have and working with everybody from Ford.

“The Ford engine is better, but that’s it. We have a lot of people there. You’ve seen how well Roush has run in the past, and we’ve run really well at times at RPM, so, hopefully, we can all put it together and figure out how to make some better race cars.”

The bottom line is that it’s a work in progress, and Kahne is likely to want to see that progress gauge move up quickly.

“I expected the cars to be better, I mean just a little bit,” he said. “You’d think gaining with that many people in that group and pulling our knowledge and their knowledge together you would think, ‘Man, we’ve got to have a better balance on race cars doing that.’ That’s not the case, but I think as the season goes, hopefully, it will be the case, but not as of right now.

“This is my seventh year, and I’ve stuck it out with them since day one and done everything I could to drive and done everything to communicate and I’m going to keep doing that. In the middle of this year or towards the end of this year, when I decide to make my decision of what I’m going to do, if I don’t feel like we’re going to be able to run with the Hendrick cars for the next three or four years, then I’ve got to make a change. If I feel like we can, then I’m going to stay right where I’m at.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.