Kansas Review

Kasey Kahne finished sixth in Sunday's Price Chopper 400 at Kansas Speedway, but he actually lost a point in NASCAR's Chase For The Sprint Cup.

Kasey moved up to 11th in Sprint Cup Series points, but fell back to 190 points behind current leader Mark Martin.

Despite those two things Kahne had a very strong run Sunday, running in the top 5 for the second half in the race. Kasey really didn't have an ill handling car all day, but did have to make some minor adjustments here and there.

"We got off a little bit, but the last two runs, last 100 laps, we were a top-three or -four car," he said. "The two tires didn’t help us at the end. We thought more would take two. It seemed to work for some earlier in the race. Looking back, we probably should have taken four. Maybe we could have been in the top five with four. We decided on that together."

Kasey struggled on restarts so the late race cautions didn't favor the #9 Budweiser team.

"Kasey worked hard driving the car," crew chief Kenny Francis said. "It came down to strategy there at the end. It’s tough to know what to do. Two tires had worked good for a lot of guys all day. We hadn’t tried it all day, but thought, 'Well, let’s go ahead and try it even though there were a lot of laps left.' It got us up front track-position wise. We had been running third to fourth and that moved us up to second. Too many of the others took four and they just overtook us. Sixth place is a real good finish."

The next stop for the Sprint Cup Series is Fontana (Auto Club Speedway). Kasey has a good record there with: 1 win, 11 top tens, and he has led 268 laps.

"I think we should be good in the final seven races," he said. "We’re definitely a ways back, but we gained a little today."

It's pretty clear his title chances are basically gone. Hendrick is just kicking everyones butt, but despite that Kasey isn't ready to give up yet. He's a fighter and he's not going to go down easy. Anything could happen. Maybe he does have a shot at it after all. Only time will tell. It's going to be difficult, but if anything that's Kasey's strong point... proving people wrong. Before we even reached mid-season people were doubting he'd make the Chase and he went on to do that. A lot of people doubted he'd win. He went on to do it twice and something tells me he's not done proving the critics wrong just yet.