Richard Petty Motorsports' Kasey Kahne gains and loses with Kansas result
Richard Petty Motorsports' Kasey Kahne finished sixth in the Price Chopper 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway. // Chuck Yadmark, NASCAR Scene
KANSAS CITY, Kan. - Richard Petty Motorsports' Kasey Kahne finished sixth in Sunday's Price Chopper 400 at Kansas Speedway, but he actually lost a point in NASCAR's Chase For The Sprint Cup.
Kahne moved up one spot to 11th in the overall standings, but fell to 190 points behind leader Mark Martin.
Still, Kahne had a strong outing Sunday, running in the top five for the second half of the race. The team was one of three to gamble on a two-tire stop on the final pit stop, but Kahne struggled to maintain his top spot after that final restart. Kahne was second with 25 laps to go but was unable to maintain that pace.
"We got off a little bit, but the last two runs, last 100 laps, we were a top-three or -four car," he said. "The two tires didn’t help us at the end. We thought more would take two. It seemed to work for some earlier in the race. Looking back, we probably should have taken four. Maybe we could have been [in the] top five with four. We decided on that together."
He said that his car wasn't that good on restarts, so the late cautions hurt the team.
Still, the team seemed relatively pleased with the overall effort.
"Kasey worked hard driving the car," crew chief Kenny Francis said. "It came down to strategy there at the end. It’s tough to know what to do. Two tires had worked good for a lot of guys all day. We hadn’t tried it all day, but thought, 'Well, let’s go ahead and try it even though there were a lot of laps left.' It got us up front track-position wise. We had been running third to fourth and that moved us up to second. Too many of the others took four and they just overtook us. Sixth place is a real good finish."
Kahne is confident in his team and their chance to gain some ground in the coming races. Especially since Auto Club Speedway in California is up next on the schedule. Kahne has one win at the track and in 11 races there has seven top-10 finishes. He has led 268 laps at the 2-mile oval.
"I think we should be good in the final seven races," he said. "We’re definitely a ways back, but we gained a little today. It was an all-right day. This is a really good team. They do a great job. Last week, we fought hard and got eighth. This week, we actually had a good car. It’s just tough battling all those guys, they run so good. California is another good track for us, a track we’re pretty good at. We’ll try to be solid top-10 again.”
