Kahne finishes one position short of the Chase

Posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 4:52 PM EDT.

Dodge driver Kasey Kahne finished one position short of qualifying for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Chase for the Championship. In the final qualifying race on Sunday, Kahne finished 19th in the Rock and Roll 400 at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway. He improved from 14th to 13th, but only the top 12 qualify. Kahne finished 72 points behind Clint Bowyer for the final slot.

Jimmie Johnson won Sunday’s race. Kurt Busch was the top Dodge driver in 10th. Other Dodge finishers were Bobby Labonte in 21st, Kyle Petty in 24th, Patrick Carpentier in 25th, Reed Sorenson 26th, Juan Pablo Montoya 30th, Ryan Newman 33rd, Elliott Sadler 37th, Sam Hornish Jr. 38th and Robby Gordon 42nd.

The next NASCAR Sprint Cup race is the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway at 1 p.m. (ET) Sunday, Sept. 14, on ABC.

Comments from the Dodge team:

Kurt Bush (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger) Finished 10th
“We had a good run today in the Miller Lite Dodge. Everything was satisfactory. I think we can give ourselves a B+ all the way through. We just need to get an A for handling one day and make sure we follow up with that with the right adjustments during the race. We were loose early on, but got it to a point where that was about all we were going to get. We went from seventh to 15th and then back into the top 10 in the pit stop shuffle. We’ll take it.”

Kasey Kahne (No. 9 Budweiser Dodge Charger) Finished 19th

ON YOUR DAY TODAY: “I feel like I drove everything I could all day. I tried to take chances. I tried to be smart at the same time to get what we could get. We couldn’t get four tires on the track. We would push getting in (to the corner) and slide the back getting off (the corner). We would slide in and slide off. It was kind of all over. We got the car better. Kenny (Francis, team director) made some good calls for where (the car) was. I think we improved it. Track position hurt us all day. I was trapped in between a couple of Roush cars on pit road and it didn’t matter where I came in (to the pits), I was trapped. It was a long day in the pits. I came out about last every single time it seemed like. At least we came out after those cars all the time. That didn’t help, but either way, we weren’t going to beat Clint (Bowyer). It was just a good track and that was it (what we were able to get).”

WHEN YOU WERE BOXED IN YOUR PITS, DID THAT SEEM INTENTIONAL TO YOU AND KENNY (FRANCIS) AND WILL YOU SPEAK TO NASCAR ABOUT IF IT WAS BLATENT OR NOT? “No, it doesn’t really matter if it was or not. I don’t know if it was. It’s hard to say. They (Roush teams) picked around us for a reason. I know that much. I know the first one (pit stop), I stopped short and was pointed out and David (Gilliland) stopped as far out of his box as he could. So the first time was (blatant) and from there it was just hard to get track position. So we were trying to come from the back every time. After that I don’t know if it was or not. They made it tough on me regardless. If they were because of team orders or not, those two drivers definitely made it tough on us. I think it was probably tough on (Jamie) McMurray to get into his (pit) also. If anything, I would say it was the 38 who was having problems trying to figure how to get in and out of his pit stall rather than trying to block us.”

Kyle Petty (No. 45 Marathon American Spirit Motor Oil Dodge Charger) Finished 24th
“It was a good day for us. We got a couple lucky dogs and got back in the race. More importantly, I think that we ran good today. It’s one of the first times that we ran good all day. We struggled to get caught up once we got our lap back, but it was a good day.”

Patrick Carpentier (No. 10 Dodge Charger) Finished 25th
“It was pretty good day. The car was great. We had good power and good forward bite all day. When you start last here, it really makes it tough. We finally got a lucky dog and got a lap back when I crashed into Paul (Menard – No. 15 car). I went too fast into the corner and just lost the rear end. We finished 25th and that’s not too bad here. At least we were up there driving hard against all the guys. It was fun.”

Ryan Newman (No. 12 Alltel Dodge Charger) Finished 33rd
“We had a top-10 car until the pit road incident (two cars got together on pit road and one was knocked into the No.12 Dodge). Actually, our Alltel Dodge was pretty good today.”

Elliott Sadler (No. 19 Best Buy Dodge Charger) Finished 37th
“It was just a frustrating day. We were running well for the first 100 laps or so and then got hit from behind and damaged the left rear quarter panel. Then we spun out a couple times which put us off the lead lap and we had a hard time recovering from that. I’m proud of the entire Best Buy Dodge crew for giving it their all today. By the end of the race, we really got the car to handle better and were turning in some really fast times, but at that point we were too far down to make up much ground. Really it was just a frustrating day all the way around. We are going to go out and give it our best in the Nationwide race and see if we can have a little better night.”

Sam Hornish Jr. (No. 77 Mobil 1 Dodge Charger) Finished 38th
“It was a disappointing day for us and our Mobil 1 Dodge. Without having much time in practice or qualifying, a lot of things were against us. We were loose to start the race. We made some pretty good changes during the race, but we just got too far behind too early.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 4:52 PM EDT and is filed under Motorsports. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments are currently closed.