Auto Club Speedway: Preview

Kasey Kahne At Auto Club Speedway
Starts	Poles	Wins	Top 5	Top 10	Led	AVG ST	AVG FN	DNF
11	1	1	3	7	268	9.36	13.00	2
Stats By Racing News Digest

• Kasey Kahne gained one position in the point standings after his sixth-place finish at Kansas Speedway last weekend. He moved into the 11th position and gained ground on the top-10 drivers. In the next two weeks, Kahne will compete at his two strongest racetracks looking to crack the top 10 in the standings.
• In 11 starts at California, Kahne has one win, three top-five and seven top-10 finishes.
• In 2006, Kahne led 130 laps at California en route to his sixth career NSCS victory.
• Kahne has finished no worse than 13th at Auto Club Speedway during the races in which he has finished. He has two DNFs at California as a result of an engine failure (spring 2007) and an accident (spring 2005).
• In 11 starts at California, Kahne has an average start of ninth and an average finish of 12th.
• Kahne will be available for interviews with the motorsports media on Friday at approximately 1:30 p.m. in the infield press conference room.


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.”

Statistically, the next two tracks (Fontana and Charlotte) are two of your best. “I think we run pretty well in these upcoming Chase races. We have as good a shot as anybody at these tracks because they’re tracks I enjoy and we’ve always raced pretty well at. If you have an issue, you lose points. If I didn’t have an issue (in New Hampshire), I think that I would have run in the top 10 and these upcoming races we can do the same thing. We have a great package for most of these tracks. I think we'll do it; we just need to keep pulling it together and get these points back. I think we have a shot at getting a lot of them back.”

Do you compare the racing at California to any other tracks?"It's hard to compare tracks to each other. I think California was built to be like Michigan but they're pretty different tracks. California doesn't have a lot of banking but it is a pretty fast track. I think, like every track, getting the car to handle in the corners is the biggest thing. It's a two-mile track and the front and back stretches are pretty long.”