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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Kahne And The Chase – An Odd Couple
Kasey Kahne will change teams in the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted August 31, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Kasey Kahne will drive for Team Red Bull in the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
However the chips fall – and they’re likely to fall on him, not with him, this year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup will be an odd one for Kasey Kahne.

Kahne is 16th in Sprint Cup points, 136 out of the final Chase spot, and has a very slim chance of sliding into the top dozen over the next two races – at Atlanta Sunday night and Richmond Sept. 11.

If a lot of weird circumstances come together and Kahne makes the Chase, he would be racing for an unlikely championship in his final season with Richard Petty Motorsports. If he races for the final 10 weeks of the season outside the Chase group, he’ll still be doing so as a lame duck. He’ll be moving on to Team Red Bull next year and then to Hendrick Motorsports in 2012.

Kahne has been on both sides of the fence in the Chase. He qualified for the first time in 2006, finishing eighth, and finished 10th last year. Otherwise, he has been on the outside looking in.

And the view, he said, isn’t good.

“You don’t feel as good about what you’ve done,” he said Tuesday. “But this year, I think it’s a lot different for me. I’ve got 12 races left where I’m at, and I don’t want to be done winning in a Ford or for Bud or for RPM. Hopefully, we can find some spark from that.

“I feel like we should have a really good shot at winning a race or two, regardless of whether we make it (the Chase).”

Even in the two Chase years in which he was in the hunt for the championship, Kahne didn’t have the luxury of coasting in.

“I’m never in the Chase at this time of the year,” he said. “We’re always right on the edge. I think we have a little bit of a shot if anything happens to the 33 [Clint Bowyer, who’s 12th].”

Kahne opened last year’s Chase in fifth position but ran into a roadblock almost immediately, falling out of the first race at New Hampshire with engine problems and dropping to 12th. That put him in a deep pit from which he never escaped. He climbed to ninth position before settling into 10th at the end of the year.

Rallying from big trouble in the first Chase race can be difficult, Kahne said.

“Ten races is a long time, so that’s the good thing about it,” he said. “If you can keep that on your mind, you’ll be all right. But there’s a lot of people involved. It’s not just the driver or the crew chief or the tire changer. If one guy gets off a little bit it hurts, and it can be any one of us. It drags you down, and that’s it.
Kasey Kahne (Left), driver of the #9 Budweiser Ford, talks with crew chief Kenny Francis. (Right) (Photo: Getty Images)

“It can hurt with confidence, momentum, that type of thing. Racing has so much to do with confidence and momentum.”

Virtually the only solution to that sort of deficit is a race win, Kahne said.

“There’s no way that drivers that are struggling have a lot of confidence, even if they say they do,” he said. “I’ve been in that same position where I’ve been struggling, and then I’ll win a race. You don’t believe how much it changes your attitude and your team’s attitude. Once you win, it’s a completely different thing.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.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.

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