Kansas Preview

Kasey Kahne At Kansas Speedway
Starts	Poles	Wins	Top 5	Top 10	Led	AVG ST	AVG FN	DNF
5	1	0	0	1	50	16.40	18.80	0
Stats By Racing News Digest

Kasey Kahne realizes that he will need to visit victory lane if he wants a shot at gaining ground in the Championship battle. With eight races remaining until the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion is crowned, Kahne points out that top-10 finishes won’t be enough to win the Cup.

“You can’t be conservative and win a championship,” Kahne said. “The bonus points come when you win races. The only shot that you’ve got is to drive your heart out and have your team step up and do their part, otherwise Jimmie Johnson is going to walk all over us.”


Kahne discusses the Chase and racing at Kansas Speedway:
Talk about this weekend’s race at Kansas. “I've qualified well and led laps at Kansas, but I haven't been able to turn it into a good finish. Every time that we go back to Kansas, the racing improves. It’s getting older and the pavement has aged pretty well. There’s lots of racing room. The track lost some grip which is a good thing because we can slide the cars around the corners a little bit easier. I think the fans are going to see a good race. We ran well at Chicagoland this year and that track is pretty similar to Kansas so hopefully we can have that same success this weekend.”

Do you feel like you still have a shot to win the Championship? “We’re definitely in a hole, that’s part of it. Hopefully everybody has a bad race and if not, if some of them do and we gain some points back and just do the best job that we can. At this point, all that we can do is try hard; keep working hard on our cars and engines. I’ll keep working on my driving. I think that we’ll be alright. We’ll gain some spots back.”

You’ve mentioned recently that you lean on Kenny Francis for support. “Kenny is a great leader, he takes care of everyone on the 9 team and the entire team leans on him. When you have that type of leadership it makes everything run so much smoother. Kenny is one of the most focused guys I have ever met and he makes you want to work that much harder.”


Kasey will be running the R5 Dodge Engine for this weekends race at Kansas Speedway strictly because it's more reliable and at this point in the year they simply cannot afford another finish like they did at New Hampshire.

"I think it will be all off the reliability," he said of making the decision on which engine to use. "If they feel they get it back to where it is really reliable like the R5, then I would think we would probably go back to it. What I told them was at the end of the day, we have some points we need to make up and if we have any more issues where we finish outside the top 35 … we have no chance.

"The very little power that you gain with the R6, it's not nearly enough power for me to say, 'Let's take a chance.' We definitely want to be reliable. Maybe we're down a couple of horsepower or something, but that's it, so at the end of the day it's not a big deal."