Richard Petty Motorsports' Kasey Kahne uses patience to finish second at Talladega Sunday
Richard Petty Motorsports' Kasey Kahne finished second in Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup Amp Energy 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. // Bill Anderson, NASCAR Scene
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TALLADEGA, Ala. - While Sunday's race showed there are obvious disadvantages to having cars race in tight packs at Talladega Superspeedway, Richard Petty Motorsports' Kasey Kahne tried to use that to his advantage.
Kahne finished second in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Amp Energy 500 at the 2.66-mile restrictor-plate track, his best finish since winning at Atlanta Sept. 6. Kahne said he did so by keeping in the pack to keep the draft in an effort to help his racing effort.
"At the end if we got back in the pack, we'd lose the draft," he said. "So to have cars around us - we tried to keep cars around, behind me mainly. If we were able to do that, we could race pretty decent.
"The car handled good, which I think everybody's cars handle good here, and we just kind of shot up through there and had great track position on that restart and ran second. So it was good for our team."
Kahne said that everyone knows that racing at Talladega offers the chance for wrecks - such as the two major incidents in the final 10 laps of Sunday's race. One saw Ryan Newman flip, slide on his roof, flip some more and have to be cut from his car. Newman said he was sore after the crash, but was not injured. Later, Mark Martin flipped as part of another major crash.
Kahne spent most of the day riding along in line, waiting for the chance to make his move.
He didn't want that move to come at the wrong time, knowing that could be disastrous for his effort. So Kahne waited, lucked into avoiding the crashes and netted a top finish.
He did so by showing patience in picking the moment to make his move. And he gained two spots, to ninth, in the Chase For The Sprint Cup with three races remaining this season.
"Nobody really wants to pull out," he said. "Because if you pull out, you're going to go to the back unless you get three, four, five guys together that want to push and try to come back up on the inside.
"So it makes it kind of difficult for the guy that decides, 'I want to do it,' because if nobody goes with you, then you go to the back. It's happened at Daytona. It's happened here before."
