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Updated March 3
After three races there's only one driver who has posted top 10 finishes in every event. And the shocker is he doesn't drive for Hendrick, Gibbs or Roush.
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| Kasey Kahne is 3-for-3 in top 10 finishes. (US Presswire) |
It's quite a turnaround for the organization, which finds Kahne fourth in points and his teammate Elliott Sadler ninth.
"This team is back to where it was," said Kahne ahead of Sunday's race at Las Vegas, referring to 2006, when he won six times and captured 19 tops 10s. "Our cars weren't right last year, something was wrong with them. It showed."
Kahne said being able to focus solely on the CoT now that it's full time in 2008 has been a boon.
"Once your car starts handling, all the communication stuff comes back," Kahne said. "(Team director Kenny Francis and I) communicate well. I've never had a problem with him; he hasn't had a problem with me. We'll race great if we have good race cars and they (the team) work really hard to give us good race cars."
Kahne pulled through with a sixth-place run at Vegas, following finishes of ninth (California) and seventh (Daytona).
"It's a good start for us," said Kahne. "The guys did a really good job. The car was a little tight. It may have been my own fault on one of the adjustments. I thought it would help. It did at times, but throughout the last half of the race it didn't. I think we could have been a little better if I hadn't made the suggestion."
The next stop for Kahne and the rest of the Sprint Cup Series is Atlanta, where he should have a good shot to make it four consecutive top 10s, if not win.
In eight starts at Atlanta, Kahne has five top 10s and four top fives, including a victory in March of 2006.
Power Rankings after Las Vegas:
| POWER RANKINGS | ||
| Current | Driver | Previous |
| 1 | Kyle Busch | 1 |
| He's off to the same kind of start Jeff Gordon enjoyed a season ago. | ||
| 2 | Carl Edwards | 2 |
| His team worked mighty hard to snag that second-place finish because his car was junk through all the practices and qualifying and wasn't much better through the early portion of Saturday night's race. | ||
| 3 | Denny Hamlin | 3 |
| Comes back with a solid seventh-place run after the disappointment of the win that got away at Richmond. | ||
| 4 | Dale Earnhardt Jr. | 4 |
| He's been putting his car up front -- leading double-digit laps in all but two races -- but victory continues to elude him. | ||
| 5 | Jeff Burton | 5 |
| Darlington can bite you, but he kept his car clean all night and snagged yet another top 10. Still no finish worse than 13th this season. | ||
| 6 | Clint Bowyer | 6 |
| He struggled all night, twice falling a lap down, but cautions earned him the free pass and he was able to salvage a decent 15th. | ||
| 7 | Tony Stewart | 7 |
| It took awhile for his crew to get his car back up to speed after an early wreck with Elliott Sadler. By the end of the race, he was among the fastest on the track, but cautions never came at the right time to get him the free pass, and he finished a lap down in 21st. | ||
| 8 | Jeff Gordon | 9 |
| Reporter: "Could you talk about the feeling that Kyle must be enjoying right now about how when you get up on race day you know you're gonna be up front and running for the wins, having so much success on a week in, week out basis?" Gordon: "No, I've forgotten what it was like, so I can't answer that." Funny, but so far true this season. | ||
| 9 | Kevin Harvick | 8 |
| He appeared to have a car at the very least capable of a top five, but he lost it and smacked the wall. After extensive repairs, he wound up 39th. | ||
| 10 | Jimmie Johnson | 10 |
| Jimmie Johnson: After three consecutive top fives, the 48 team has turned in three consecutive finishes outside the top 10. Saturday they were derailed by a bad alternator. | ||
| 11 | Greg Biffle | 11 |
| Would have been nice to see a Biffle-Busch battle for the win as they were clearly the class of the field, but mistakes and a parts failure were his undoing again. | ||
| 12 | Matt Kenseth | 16 |
| Led three laps Saturday night, only the second time in the past eight races he has managed to lead. | ||
| 13 | David Ragan | 17 |
| Who'd have guessed that he'd have more top five finishes than Kenseth at this point in the season? | ||
| 14 | Ryan Newman | 12 |
| A tough night all around. It started early with an unscheduled stop for a damaged splitter and got a lot worse later when he had to bring it to the garage to fix a broken rear end. | ||
| 15 | Martin Truex Jr. | 15 |
| His No. 1 car was looking strong through the middle part of the race, but contact with Hamlin sent him into the wall, and his car was never the same as he faded to 14th. | ||
| 16 | Juan Pablo Montoya | 13 |
| Following his second at Talladega, he has put up a couple of duds. | ||
| 17 | Kasey Kahne | 14 |
| Wrecked his primary car in qualifying and was forced to his backup, which wasn't up to snuff. | ||
| 18 | Bobby Labonte | 18 |
| He ran among the top 10 the first half of the race, but once the track cooled, he started to struggle with a tight race car. | ||
| 19 | Travis Kvapil | NR |
| For a while there I thought he might challenge for the victory, but he had to settle for eighth. Hopefully, the strong efforts of him and Yates Racing teammate David Gilliland will land them full-time sponsors soon. | ||
| 20 | Mark Martin | 20 |
| Martin Martin: Dropped to 35th in the early going and was never a factor, winding up 16th. | ||
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