NASCAR At Michigan: Kasey Kahne Rallies Back To 3rd-Place Result After Crash

Sunday’s box score shows that Kasey Kahne finished the NASCAR race at Michigan International Speedway in the third position. However, doesn’t indicate just how eventful of a day he had in the Pure Michigan 400.

The topsy-turvy afternoon started on Lap 66 when Kahne was running second – directly behind leader Mark Martin – and the two become tangled with a pair of lapped cars. The end result saw Martin slam into pit road, while Kahne took a spin through the infield grass.

“I thought I might try to pass him and those guys,” Kahne said. “I don’t know if Mark was tight behind them or cruising behind them, but either way I wanted to get by those three.

“Next thing I knew, the 42 (Juan Pablo Montoya) and 47 (Bobby Labonte) were crashing. Mark was in there. Going so fast, not a whole lot you could do. I slid through the grass, thought it destroyed my car. Fortunately it just pushed the right front fender in.”

Martin’s car came to a rest in Kahne’s pit box, where thankfully no one was injured. The extended caution, however, did allow Kahne to make multiple trips to pit road, where his team was able to patch up his No. 5 machine.

“From there, we just battled back,” Kahne said. “We fixed the right front. We had good pit stops. We had a nice strategy to get back to pass some of those cars – not all on the racetrack, but pass them in other ways.”

And when his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson lost an engine with four laps to go, there was Kahne on the subsequent restart sitting in the top five. That was followed by an aggressive move that saw Kahne go three-wide into Turn 1 and jumped him to third, which is where he finished – the fifth time in seven races he’s finished in the top 10.

“I just felt really good about our speed,” Kahne said. “Our car has been really fast. We’ve been pretty consistent as a team. We want to make it to the Chase. That’s a big part of our season, something that we’re really shooting for. I think our team has done a great job of that.

“We put a solid day together. It would still be nice to get one more win and (clinch) that Chase spot, make it happen. But we’ll see. We still have good tracks to go; we just need to keep running up front.”