Kasey Kahne will be leaving Red Bull Racing at the end of the season to head over to Hendrick Motorsports. His ride and sponsors are secure; his future is probably as bright as it has ever been. Kahne is determined to bring a win to RBR before he leaves.
In the last the last three weeks Kahne has run as best as he has all season. He had a car capable of challenging for the win at New Hampshire but fuel mileage bit him late.
Sunday at Kansas, Kahne charged to the front after multiple restarts late in the race. Kahne nearly ran down eventual winner Jimmie Johnson on Sunday but a late restart saw Johnson pull away even though Kahne had fresher tires.
“Yeah, I thought if I could get a good restart I'd have a shot because my tires were a little fresher than his. Jimmie was the car to beat all day that I could tell, so I knew he was going to be fast once we got going, and he actually just jumped -- like he took off before I expected him to, so I just was thinking it was going to be a little bit later, and when he took off I kind of jumped it and hit the throttle maybe a little too aggressively, spun the tires and then got them back and was accelerating.
Kahne finished second but its clear while he might be leaving in six weeks he is focused solely on 2011.
“The biggest thing to me would be to leave on a good note. There are a lot of people there working really hard and unsure about maybe their future and where they're going to work next year, and they're still putting everything they have into our race cars each week. That's pretty awesome on their part. Kenny Francis is doing -- just always is looking, him and Keith Rodman, they're always looking to make the car just a little bit better, how can I do this, how can I do that, so we're always working together trying to do that. I'm fortunate to go with him next year, so we're working on things for next year as well as just trying to finish strong this year.”
Recent strong runs have to bring some satisfaction to his team as their futures are far more uncertain than Kahne’s.
Easily Kahne could have checked out weeks ago. He was a non factor for the Chase in 2011 and running in a lame duck situation at RBR.
Instead, he and his team have come to the track every week focused and finally the results are showing that.
He has suffered through his fair share of bad luck this season but the big picture for this team is they need to win and run strong to bring in perspective buyers for the team.
Even though Kahne’s future is set he is focused on the present and earning a win at RBR before the checkered flag waves at Homestead.
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