500 miles at Pocono doesn’t faze Kasey Kahne after dominating win
By Jeff Gluck - Associate Editor
Thursday, June 12, 2008
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The day dragged on and on, and 500 miles at Pocono Raceway seemed to most drivers like f-i-v-e h-u-n-d-r-e-d m-i-l-e-s.
They were exhausted, drained, ready to go home. Was this the Pocono 500 or the Pocono 5000?
Drivers emerged from their cars on the sticky Pennsylvania afternoon thankful that they had completed 200 circuits around the 2.5-mile track, some looking as though they had just completed a marathon.
Forget the Coca-Cola 600. Five hundred miles at Pocono is as tiresome as it gets.
“This is the longest race I think I’ve ever been a part of,” driver Denny Hamlin said. “It just seemed like it took forever.”
On the other hand, the driver in victory lane seemed quite refreshed. Granted, Kasey Kahne had just downed the ice-cold product of sponsor Budweiser, but the Gillett Evernham Motorsports driver said his race didn’t feel long at all.
In fact, he said, it flew by.
“It’s so much different when you run [well] and when you have a great car,” Kahne said. “...To me, I didn’t think it was that long of a race today – but every other 500-miler here in the past, I thought it was way too long.”
After sweeping the Charlotte speed weeks by claiming victory in both the Sprint All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600, Kahne showed he deserved to be part of any discussion involving the Chase For The Sprint Cup.
After Pocono, he showed he deserves to be part of any discussion involving the championship.
Kahne has returned to his winning ways, bringing back memories of the days when he won a series-high six races in 2006.
“The excitement, the momentum, the confidence ... you go to Gillett Evernham right now, and everybody is walking around there with a smile on their faces, and that’s not how it was a month-and-a-half ago,” he said. “But that’s probably how it was in ’06.”
To explain precisely how Kahne finished first, 3.7 seconds ahead of Red Bull Racing’s Brian Vickers and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Hamlin, it would take up more pages of this magazine than are available.
The pit strategies were that many, that diverse. One car would be out front for a while, then get shuffled back as others declined to pit or took two tires or fuel only.
Crew chiefs pored over notes and calculators and computers. No matter how fast certain drivers and cars may have been, their fortunes were squarely in the hands of engineers on this day.
Kahne’s race was the perfect example. He had the fastest car, but he led a race-high 69 laps at five different times.
Up and down he went. He started on the pole and led two chunks of laps early, but team director (also known as crew chief) Kenny Francis out-thought himself during a pit stop on lap 59.
Kahne was running in the top 10 when Francis called him into the pits for a four-tire stop. Yet as the stop was underway, Francis told the team he wanted two tires instead.
But it was too late. The front-tire changer had already popped three lugnuts off the left-front tire, and Kahne drove away with a loose tire. There was no choice but to have him come back into the pits.
“I was pretty down, pretty mad at myself,” Francis said. “The biggest thing I was afraid of was [that] it was going to rain and we would not have time to get back up there.”
Kahne restarted 38th, and the rain Francis feared arrived a dozen laps later. At that point, Kahne had moved up only five spots.
But the doom and gloom was only temporary. The rain turned out to be a quick shower, and the track dried as quickly as it was dampened. Less than eight minutes after the race was stopped, it was back underway.
And so was Kahne. It took him just 20 laps to drive from 33rd back into the top 10, and he recaptured the lead 30 laps later. Who says you can’t pass in the new car?
Time passed quickly inside the No. 9 car, just as Kahne was quickly passing the field.
“Those 60 laps coming back to the front flew by,” Kahne said. “It just happened so quick.”
Even upon his return to the front, however, Kahne did not stay there. Varying pit strategies again caused him to lose the lead, since he was forced to pit an extra time for fuel when others had already made their final stop. (At Pocono, crew chiefs can risk different strategies because the laps are so long that they can pit under green without going down a lap).
But those who stayed out when Kahne pitted eventually saw their strategies thwarted by a late caution flag. At that point, Kahne’s track position and tires were good enough to put him in position to win, and he led the final 15 laps of the race.
Ultimately, Kahne needed most of the extra 100 miles that so many drivers say they wish would go away. But that did nothing to quell the suggestions that Pocono’s races should be shortened.
In the days leading up to the race, drivers entertained the typical questions about whether or not NASCAR and track officials should shave the events to 400 miles, which drivers said would create more excitement. The intensity of a race typically increase as the event’s conclusion nears.
“If it were my show, I’d say we’re running a 350,” Jeff Burton said two days before the race. “What the heck – you can always go back [if the fans don’t like it].”
"Hell, I think 200 miles would be better,” Jimmie Johnson echoed then. “I just don’t know if you keep your audience captive for 400 or 500 miles. Five hundred miles here is actually four or five hours. It’s just a long, long day.”
The comments after the race were not only unchanged, but louder in volume.
It seems 500 miles may be a long race anywhere, but at Pocono it feels longer than the Rolling Stones’ careers.
“A lot of the reason is we never run 500 miles where the average speed is 155 mph,” Hamlin said. “If we run 500 miles, it’s at Atlanta where we are running an average speed of 180, so the race doesn’t take near as long. Here, the pace is so slow.”
The triangular track offers agonizingly long straightaways with tight turns, which makes every lap seem like a trek into the Pennsylvania woods.
Drivers roar out of Turn 1 and are faced with a straightaway so long, they have time to do their taxes before braking for the next turn.
Turn 2 is the famous – or infamous, depending on one’s point of view – Tunnel Turn, a tight corridor positioned over the track’s only entrance/exit tunnel.
Another straightaway is followed by another turn that doesn’t lend itself to passing, and then it’s on to more straight-line racing before diving into Turn 1 again.
Repeat 200 times, and that’s racing at Pocono.
This year, however, there was a little twist. When NASCAR teams and officials showed up for an open test at the track less than two weeks prior to the Pocono 500, they were shocked to see that raceway officials had paved a one-lane-wide strip of fresh asphalt from the exit of Turn 2 all the way past the exit of Turn 3.
No one had been consulted about the new asphalt strip prior to its construction, nor did anyone – NASCAR included – know it had happened until the teams arrived. Pocono officials simply did it on their own, and with no announcement or official explanation.
Whether or not it the strip – mislabeled by many as a “patch” – was intended to have any sort of impact on racing is debatable, but the affect was not. Drivers figured out during the test that the new asphalt offered more grip than the rest of the surface on the aging, rough, bumpy track.
To make things more interesting, the strip was up high in Turn 3 – changing the preferred line from the bottom of the race track to up near the wall.
“I didn’t even try running the bottom,” Carl Edwards said after the first practice for the race. “That new strip of asphalt just feels so good, everyone’s running up there.”
“It’s just like a train track,” Kyle Busch said. “You get up there and you run around there, and it’s just like you’re on a rail. Everybody is going to be doing it.”
Some drivers predicted that the strip would create a second groove that would allow for more passing. Ultimately, that idea turned out to be a bust.
Though some drivers attempted to pass on the traditional lower line, it was still a no-passing zone for the most part.
“I was surprised,” Johnson said. “I made a couple passes on the bottom, but it’s still single-file. ... Instead of chasing the curve, you’re chasing the patch.”
And for most of the race, the car they were chasing was Kahne’s red No. 9. These days, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
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