Kasey Kahne taps Ryan Newman after contact sends him to garage
Kasey Kahne limps his car to pit road after a run in caused by Ryan Newman.
// LaDon George, NASCAR Illustrated
HAMPTON, Ga. – For the second consecutive race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, there was retaliation on the track.
This time, it was much tamer than last March when Carl Edwards flipped Brad Keselowski. This time, it involved two drivers – Kasey Kahne and Ryan Newman – who have a healthy respect for each other.
Kahne had to take his Richard Petty Motorsports car to the garage after getting hit from behind by Ryan Newman with 24 laps remaining in the Emory Healthcare 500. The contact resulted in Kahne getting into Kurt Busch, and suffering a flat tire and broken water line.
Kahne, who was running fifth at the time, lost 15 laps. And he decided that Newman should pay.
After returning to the track, Kahne tapped Newman, who was running fourth and had to settle for eighth after the retaliation.
Following the race, Newman went over to Kahne’s car – their haulers were parked next to each other – and talked to him before Kahne could even get out of his car. Kahne got out and they talked for a couple of minutes, obviously not agreeing with each other but acting cordial.
“It was just hard racing and he was frustrated and he tried to take it out on me,” Newman said. “I asked him if next time, we can just talk about it first. The 18 [of Kyle Busch] hit me the same time I hit the 9 [of Kahne]. It was within a millisecond.
“I was just trying to help him to push him and get him ahead of the 2 car [of Kurt Busch]. It didn’t work out. We’ve seen it several times this year and it was me trying to help him out and it causes accidents once in a while. It hurt him, but in the grand scheme of things, he tried to hurt me and it didn’t hurt us as bad. We’ll just go on.”
Kahne was frustrated as he saw a potential top-five day end up as a 32nd-place finish in the record book.
“I was going down the straightaway and got hit from behind,” Kahne said. “I know it was the 39 [of Newman]. I feel like he lost us about 20 spots [or more] today. He said he got hit from behind and got forced into me. That’s racing.
“But either way, we’re the ones that took the biggest shot there.”
Both drivers entered the day as longshots to make the Chase For The Sprint Cup. Kahne left with his Chase hopes officially over while Newman moved up two spots to 13th but 117 points behind 12th-place Clint Bowyer with Saturday night’s race at Richmond determining the 12-driver field.
“Me and Ryan are fine – we don’t have an issue with each other,” Kahne said. “You get racing sometimes, and it makes you mad. He lost about four spots from me rubbing him a little bit. And I lost 25 or 30 from him rubbing me. So he got me a little better.”
The contact with Kahne wasn’t even Newman’s first of the day. Earlier in the event, Greg Biffle and Newman had contact in another three-wide battle.
“Biffle just cut across my nose,” Newman said. “I don’t know if his spotter called him clear and he thought he was and he wasn’t, but he just came across my nose and spun himself out. It hurt our day, and I should be mad at Biffle as much as Kasey should be mad at me.”
Biffle said he wasn’t sure what happened.
“I have to watch the replay,” Biffle said. “He certainly didn’t cut us any slack. He could have cut us some slack and let us go there. I don’t know, I’ll have to watch the replay before I make my judgment,
but I didn’t know we were still three-wide.
“It looked like I had cleared him, along with the 43 [of AJ Allmendinger], and I just turned down into the corner and, unfortunately, he was there. We still locked ourselves into the chase, so we’re excited about that.”
