Kahne, Francis become pair to watch in Sprint Cup Series

In 2006, Gillett Evernham Motorsports' Kasey Kahne was on a roll. Winner of six races, he made the championship showdown for the first time and netted his best career finish of eighth in the NASCAR Cup standings.
   
Two years later, Kahne couldn't even remember how that felt. Until now, that is.
   
At the beginning of this season, Kahne and his Kenny Francis-led team looked like they had overcome the struggles that left them 19th in the standings last season. They opened the year with four top-10 finishes in five races, which appeared to be a return to form, but were not a threat to win in any of those races.
   
Then things stopped going as well for the team. Kahne endured a stretch in which he earned only one more top-10 finish in the next six races. He never fell further than 14th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup points standings, but the driver didn't look too much like a championship contender.

Then he won the non-points all-star race. Then he won the points-paying Coca-Cola 600. Then, two weeks later, he won again, this time at Pocono Raceway.
   
Suddenly, Kahne was pretty sure he could remember how 2006 felt after all.
   
Not exactly, though. This time, since he's had to learn to manage the new car and because he is coming off a season when he struggled, the success feels a little different.
   
"The team was really strong then," Kahne said. "You know, everything, the communication, everything was there. But this car is so much different. What you look for in this race car and how you get it to go around the corner and things, I just think it's a little bit different now than it was then.
    
“But I mean, the excitement, the momentum, the confidence and everything; you go to Gillett Evernham right now and everybody is walking around there with a smile on their face, and that's not how it was a month and a half ago.

"But that's probably how it was in '06. It's just good. Everybody is excited. I'm just glad I can be part of it and I'm glad that I'm with Kenny Francis and he can give me cars as fast as he did today."
   
Francis continues to point out that the team wasn't struggling as much as some assumed. Gillett Evernham entered the offseason knowing that it had much work to do before it could compete for race wins once more. Not only did Kahne struggle in 2007, but teammate Elliott Sadler finished 25th in the standings, with two top-10 finishes all season.

Rookie Patrick Carpentier joined the team this season and has been forced to make the races based on qualifying speed since the team he joined was outside the top 35 in owners points last season. So the team was realistic about the task at hand.
   
Still, Francis believed that his team as better than it was showing from the opening of the year. He points to good runs at Daytona and California, to an eighth-place finish at Las Vegas that came while Kahne was battling the flu. At Texas something broke on the car. At Phoenix they cut a right front tire. From his point of view, things were never as grim as some seemed to think.
   
"We've had a really good season going," Francis said. "We've stayed kind of quiet and nobody talks about us a lot, and that's fine with me."
   
“Til we start winning," Kahne adds.
   
And that's just the way Francis envisioned this working out.
   
"The whole company has been like, 'We are going to take this slow and steady and build it back up from where we are at, and we've still got a long way to go,'" he said. "We keep learning every week and we try to get better every week. It's tough sledding out there, for sure.”
   
Now, though, everything seems better and brighter for the men on this team.
   
As Kahne looks over the early part of this season - the part that came before the wins - and compares that to now, he sees some improvement not only in performances, but also in himself.
   
“As a driver, I didn't feel like my confidence was down," he said. "I went to the track every week and I felt like I was ready to win and ready to - I went in with a good attitude. But until I actually won this year, the all-star race, I realized that I was leaving a little bit out there and wasn't communicating probably like I should have been with Kenny and maybe I wasn't communicating quite as well as I have in the past."
   
Now things are even better - something that should be a sign of things to come to the men who are now paying more attention to this team. For Kahne, the improvement started just a short while ago - and he hopes that it doesn't end any time soon.
    
“Since then, I've done a better job, and it's just kind of like everything is clicking at the same time," Kahne said. "I don't think it started at the all-star race. Like Kenny said, we've had good cars all year.

"But the Charlotte test, I feel like we hit on some things and we had a great car at Darlington, until I run it into the wall. To me that was where it all started, the Charlotte test and Darlington, you know, we were hitting on some things at that point.”

• Mentioned Drivers:
• Kasey Kahne