Making up points is Kasey Kahne’s mindset through next few Chase races
Richard Petty Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne is still looking to climb out of the hole from a blown engine in the first race in the Chase For The Sprint Cup, and this weekend’s Pepsi 500 could be a good place to do it.
Kahne has one victory, three top-five and seven top-10 finishes at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., site of this weekend’s Pepsi 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race.
Kahne is 11th in the 12-driver Chase standings, 190 points behind leader Mark Martin. But Kahne is only 99 points behind fifth-place Kurt Busch as the circuit heads to California for the first time in the Chase after swapping places on the schedule with Atlanta Motor Speedway this year.
“Fontana is a good place for us,” Kahne said of the 2-mile track. “The track has always treated us really well with results. We seem to have a pretty good package there every time we go with [crew chief] Kenny Francis and the things that he does there.
“I really like Atlanta a lot and we’ve run great at California, so to me it’s kind of a wash wherever they’re at. I think the only benefit is that Atlanta on Labor Day is way better than Fontana on Labor Day, and, hopefully, that helps out the crowds and excitement of the two races. So far, it showed at Atlanta to be a huge benefit to move that to Labor Day weekend versus in the Chase where it used to be.”
After California, the Chase moves to Lowe’s Motor Speedway, where Kahne has a pretty good record, too.
“I think we run pretty well in these upcoming Chase races,” Kahne said. “We have as good a shot as anybody at these tracks because they’re tracks I enjoy and we’ve always raced pretty well at. If you have an issue, you lose points. If I didn’t have an issue [in New Hampshire], I think that I would have run in the top 10, and these upcoming races we can do the same thing.
“We have a great package for most of these tracks. I think we'll do it; we just need to keep pulling it together and get these points back. I think we have a shot at getting a lot of them back.”
