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Kahne hopes Lowes Motor Speedway can give boost
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Published: May 14, 2009
Needing a lift, Kasey Kahne hopes Lowe's Motor Speedway will again serve as a remedy, even if only temporary, over the next two weekends.
Kahne can run poorly at other tracks but more often than not the 1.5-mile track outside of Concord has proven to be the penicillin for his team's ills.
In the past six points races at LMS, Kahne sped to three wins, a second and an eighth. That doesn't include the Saturday night in 2004 that Kahne showed that he had figured out the place as he dominated in just his second time there as a rookie. Starting second, he led 207 laps before crashing on lap 267 of a 500-miler.
His proficiency at LMS held last season even though he came to the May races mired in a six-race streak in which a 10th and a 17th were his only finishes better than 22nd.
Instead of cursed, Kahne was magically blessed at LMS, starting with his selection into the All-Star race as a fan selection. He made the most of the opportunity by winning the exhibition and used the triumph as a springboard to a solid run in the Coca-Cola 600 that ended up in victory when Tony Stewart crashed out of the lead with three laps remaining.
The boost carried over into June. Two weeks after the 600 victory, Kahne won at Dover. A week later, he finished second at Michigan. His only top-five finish for the rest of the season was a second in October at LMS.
"It's one of those tracks where our team gets it and I get it," Kahne said.
He gets it so much at LMS that he should be considered as much of a victory threat as Jimmie Johnson, who became the driver to beat at Lowe's races when he posted five wins in six starts from 2003-2005. Johnson hasn't won at LMS since.
"I still gun for Jimmie because I think he's guy to beat at Charlotte. But, we've won (four) here now so I think I people think that the 9 car is going to be tough -- that the 9 is going to be tough and the 48 is going to be tough.
So far this season he hasn't been tough much of anywhere in something of a repeat of 2008 for Kahne and his red No. 9 Dodges from the team started by Ray Evernham and now known as Richard Petty Motorsports. He has posted just two top-10 finishes -- a fifth at Bristol and a seventh at Atlanta. In the six races since the Bristol outing, his only finish above 19th was a 13th at Phoenix, which has been followed by outings of 36th, 29th and 23rd.
Kahne showed signs that he getting back into form when he charged into the top five last Saturday night at Darlington before a wreck took him out of contention in the Southern 500.
"This year is similar to last," Kahne said. "I was really frustrated coming into Charlotte and I'm real frustrated right now. Charlotte can turn a season around for the 9 car. Last year, we were running 15th-20th, went to Charlotte and were first or second, ran that way for about a month and then we were back to 15th-20th. We need to figure out what we are doing there and just take it to other tracks so we can be more consistent and run up front."
Kahne became so frustrated on horrible night two weeks ago at Richmond that an in-car camera caught him throwing a water bottle in frustration during a caution period.
"I just get angry," Kahne said. "I don't see how we can be so bad at times at Richmond. I can't figure it out and I lost it. All I want to do is race and win and run up front. When you have that hard of time doing it, you just get frustrated."
Kahne admits that hasn't been the only time in recent weeks that he's gone against his mild-mannered personality and vented frustrations inside the car. He said the frustrations extend to teammates Elliott Sadler, A.J. Allmendinger and Reed Sorenson.
"I had a 10-second spurt at Richmond where I lost I in the car and then I calmed down," Kahne said. "I try not to get too crazy because when you get mad, you say thing you don't mean. All of our guys are frustrated."
Kahne said he guards against pushing the button on his two-way radio and letting his crew hear the tirades.
"I quit pressing the button," Kahne said. "Three weeks ago I went on a spurt in the car and had my finger right up against the bottom. The crew saw it on the in-car camera and asked what I was doing. I told them they should be glad that I didn't press the button because it was ugly.
"We've just have to figure it out and hopefully sooner or later."
Kahne believes his Dodges weigh too much and his engines don't produce enough power. His team does not use the new Dodge generation that the other major Dodge team, Penske Racing, used to help turn Kurt Busch into a winner at Atlanta earlier this year. Kahne doesn't know when Richard Petty Motorsports will start using the new engine.
"Our problems are the weight of the cars and the engines," Kahen said. "I don't know if we are missing on our setups because if the car is overweight and engines aren't running well, it's difficult to say if the setups are right or wrong. We qualify fairly well so that shows when we have all the down force and stuff, the setups are close."
Kahne said his complaints fell on deaf ears at RPM for several months.
"My concerns have been the same for awhile," Kahne said. "At the end of last year and this year, they'd basically look at me and it would go in one ear and out the other, and then they'd go on with their day and with whatever they were doing running Richard Petty Motorsports.
"But in the last month, they started to think about it and realize that our cars are really heavy and our engines really don't run. I just want to win and we need to figure out how to win."
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