Kasey Kahne
- Height: 5-8
- Weight: 150
- Born: Apr 10, 1980, Enumclaw, WA
News and Notes
Nov 4
This week: Kahne, who gained two spots in the standings to ninth with his finish Sunday, won at Texas in April 2006 but has just two top-five finishes and no other top-10s in 10 starts there. He was 24th last November and 19th in April. "Texas is actually a really neat track," Kahne said. "I've always liked Texas. It's fast. The banking is awesome. It's a little bit rough, too. There are some spots that are rough, so you have that side where your car is bouncing around and you have to slide the back around. I enjoy racing there. Getting into turn one can be tricky. It is real flat, and then as you are coming into the corner, you get into the banking. It's almost like you fall into the corner at 190 miles per hour. Turn three is similar, but it is not as drastic. It is a difficult place to get your car to handle the way you want. It is a great track, but you really need your car to handle well on entry to be competitive. The biggest thing is the front end. You have to get the left front working. You have to make sure that your front two tires are cutting real well. You need your back (of the car) to be in the track real well. The biggest thing for me is the front tires. That's usually what we struggle with here -- the front tires aren't working as good as they need to work. The couple times that they have worked really well, we've either been first of second."
Last week: Kahne finished second at Talladega and was happy to bring his car back in one piece. He led one time for one lap. "The team did a good job with our Dodge," Kahne said. "We had a good handling car but lost the draft a couple of times. We needed to be in the middle of the draft. (Brian) Vickers was pushing me really hard there before the caution. I was just in the right place at the right time. It unfolded well for us at the end. If we got back in the pack, we'd lose the draft. We needed to have cars around us and tried to keep cars behind us, mainly. If we were able to do that, we could race pretty decent. The car handled good, which I think everybody's car handled good here. We just kind of shot up through there, had great track position on that restart and ran second. It was good for our team."
Etc.: In addition to Sunday's Cup Series event, Kahne also is scheduled to participate in the Nationwide Series race Saturday, piloting the No. 38 entry for Braun Racing.
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