Dover

Richard Petty Motorsports’ Kasey Kahne admitted that he was “definitely in a hole"
after last weekend’s engine failure that dropped him to last place among the
12 drivers in NASCAR’s Chase For The Sprint Cup.



NASCAR Sprint Cup Series action kicked off Friday morning around Lunch time.
Kasey and the #9 Budweiser team decided to work on race-trim for the entire
first practice session which explains why he was 40th fastest if you were watching.
After last weeks mishap Kenny Francis wanted to focus on the Race-Setup knowing they needed the best possible finish to regain as many points as possible. "We worked on some race things. I think we made some good progress." Kahne said after 1st practice had ended.

For Qualifying Kasey drew to go out 26th which is a very good thing. The later you go out
the better because it gives the track a chance to cool down and produce a faster lap time.
"We have a good draw and I think the car will be fast so I'm looking forward to it." Kahne said.

When it finally became Kasey's turn to take a shot at the "Monster Mile" he put down
a pretty darn good lap and qualified 6th. Kasey had this to say after climbing out of his machine.
"A pretty good run for our Budweiser Dodge. It felt a little bit loose, but decent. We gained sixth-tenths from practice which is a nice jump for us. I feel pretty good about it. Our car is pretty fast in race trim."

Final practice was looking a lot better for the 9 Team as they were #1 on the Speed Charts
for pretty much the entire session.

As for last weeks engine woes at New Hampshire Kasey said he had put it all behind him.
In fact he had barely thought of it all week. "I spent all week with my Sprint Car team
and just hanging out with buddies. You can't let stuff like that stick in your head anyway.
There's nothing you can do to change it and it will only mess with your mentality going into
the next race and that's something we don't need. I'm looking forward to going to Dover and
getting back on the right track"

The green flag dropped at 2:15pm and the #9 machine took off like lighting. The car was very good at the beginning of the race with the car only being a little loose. After the competition caution on lap 25 due to rain the 9 Team took 2 right side tires and fuel and a minor air pressure adjustment.

By lap 160 Kahne pitted under caution and said he was pretty happy with the car just needed
the front end to stop hitting the track so Kenny ordered a 'packer' to be put in the right front
to try and help the problem.

Kasey pitting again after Kyle Busch brought out a caution on lap 207 and reported the car was "CRAZY loose" so bad the splitter was hitting the track so Kenny Francis put another packer in the car this time in the Left Front and made a slight wedge adjustment. Despite Kasey not being very happy with the car it was very fast all day and he never fell out of the Top 15.

With 50 to go Kahne's car wasn't handling the way he wanted and the crew had made a few mistakes through-out the day costing him spots on pit road. It didn't look good as all the other
Chase drivers were having strong runs while Kasey was back in 18th after being strong for
most of the day.

By the time there was 20 laps to go Kasey's car came to life and shot up to 8th spot. Despite
his efforts he was not able to pass teammate A.J Allmendinger before the checkered flag
flew. Overall a pretty good day considering the struggles they had. Kasey didn't move up
a spot in points, but he's that much closer to 11th. Hopefully Kansas will go well for him.
Anything can happen. He's not out of this yet.

(I apologize for the way the sentences are lol. Blogger is
just separating them automatically and I can't fix it. I'll try and have
it fixed so next weeks doesn't looked all jacked up.)