Kasey Kahne shows adaptability, promise of Richard Petty Motorsports
Richard Petty Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne moved to 13th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings with his Infineon Raceway win Sunday. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
Even after he captured Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway, Richard Petty Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne was quick to point out that driving on NASCAR's road courses was still a little foreign to him. Handling such tracks went against everything he knew about racing.
Kahne headed to the Sonoma, Calif., track with a best past finish of 23rd. So it was with great caution, and perhaps a little trepidation, that he spoke of his potential prior to the race. Then he went out and combined ideal pit strategy with tenacious driving to earn his first Cup road-course victory. Kahne was dogged by some of the best road-course racers in the business – Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya - in the closing laps, but he held on through multiple restarts to garner the win.
His victory put one of NASCAR's fan favorites back on top for a week, and it returned both Richard Petty and Dodge to victory lane, though Petty has clearly been absent longer than the manufacturer.
The victory also showcased a new side of Kahne, though the 29-year-old distanced himself from any talk that he has now mastered this type of racing. But he will admit he has improved dramatically.
"The way I learned how to race, I didn't do the go-karts, I didn't do a lot of the road-racing things or any of it," Kahne says. "To me this is a lot different. But it's also my sixth year in the Cup series driving these cars on this type of a course. You just learn, you get better. The experience is something that you can't beat.
"I think that was the key to what we did today personally, just the experience and where I've been in the past and how I remembered things, mistakes that I've made and how to not make those mistakes today. To beat Tony, we had an unbelievable car. The Budweiser Dodge was really quick. The restarts we were able to hold him off."
Kahne said he worked on what he considered to be the key passing points – Turns 7 and 11 - during practices to get prepared.
And then he focused on his restarts. Double-file restarts for the leaders were supposed to complicate things for those running up front at Infineon and, in many ways, they did.
But Kahne held firm, holding off the contenders through four restarts in the final 29 laps to take the win.
"My biggest thing was don't spin the tires, work on getting into Turn 1 there and just being beside [Stewart] at the top of the hill and hopefully hold him off there," Kahne says. " A few of the times we were able to jump the start and beat him into [Turn] 1, no problem. So that was - it was tough.
"That new restart deal is tough. For the last three weeks … I think every weekend I've had some good ones and some bad ones as far as the restarts go. Today we were able to pick where we wanted to be, and it worked out really good for us, and we were able to hold him off. But, yeah, two to go, another restart, I was like, 'I can't believe this.'"
Still, the path to victory beat the scenario many had feared entering the race - that this would come down to fuel mileage. While some drivers did try to conserve at various points in the race, they were running all out at the end.
And that made it more exciting - both for the driver trying to stay at the front and the one trying to catch him.
"The best thing about it was that, and the same with Kasey, we just got turned loose to where we could just run as hard as we could run, and I'd much rather be in that situation here at Sonoma," Stewart said. "It's so much more fun to attack the race track and run hard.
"Kasey just never made a mistake at the end. He did an awesome job those last 20 laps and just never slipped a wheel, never missed a corner and made a mistake. He made one mistake the whole time in the closing laps there, and we were able to get a run on him but couldn't do anything when we got there. He was just better than we were."
For Petty, it was a great moment. He didn't count this as a continuation of the success he enjoyed with Petty Enterprises over the years. Instead of looking at the merger between himself, Petty Enterprises and Gillett Evernham Motorsports as the continuation of his own effort, he gave credit to what existed before he came on board.
Still, he enjoyed being in victory lane for the first time since 1999.
And he hopes that this is just the beginning of an upward climb for the group. RPM had three drivers in the top 10 Sunday - AJ Allmendinger finished seventh and Elliott Sadler was 10th – to add to the enjoyment.
"It was one of those days - everything fell together, OK," Petty said. "The car was good. The crew was good. They made really good strategy on making their pit stops, the whole deal. And it was one of those picture-perfect days. They did everything exactly what they needed to do to win the race.
"You get maybe three or four of those chances a year. That's really - you might win more races than that, but a lot of times you've got to overcome other circumstances. But they had everything lined up. You know, what can you say? When everything goes right, and that's basically what it was today. Hopefully, it's the beginning of something else, but it's just another day. We've got to get ready now and go to New Hampshire and back this one up."
