Kasey Kahne and Kenny Francis won the most recent Nextel Cup race at Texas. Credit: Autostock

Shop Talk: Francis

Kahne's crew chief on Texas and what makes his driver so tough

The best thing Evernham Motorsports crew chief Kenny Francis can say about last weekend's Bass Pro Shops 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway was that the car Kasey Kahne ran there wasn't supposed to go to Texas this weekend.

	Kasey Kahne celebrates his win at Texas earlier this year. Credit: Autostock
	Inside the Numbers Kasey Kahne at Texas Race St. Fin. Status Spr. '04 3 2 running Spr. '05 3 35 engine Fall '05 15 42 engine Spr. '06 1 1 running Victory LaneKasey Kahne celebrates in Victory Lane at Texas Closing lapsKasey Kahne passes Tony Stewart for the victory Sign up for TrackPass now BUY THE NEXTEL i836

Kahne, after Francis had supervised adjustments to their No. 9 Dodge to put it in a possible position to sweep this season's Atlanta events, made an uncharacteristic judgment error and crashed with David Stremme -- knocking both drivers out of the race and Kahne out of any reasonable chance of winning the Nextel Cup championship.

Francis recently took a break to discuss set-up issues at Texas and Kahne's breakout season -- his first done in conjunction with the veteran crew chief.

Q: Kenny, where are you emotionally, coming into the stretch run of the Chase for the Nextel Cup -- or do you not let emotions enter into it?

Francis: I don't get too emotional over it. I try to just go day-to-day and do our job and go to the next race, you know? I don't suppose we get real emotional over it, no matter what happens.

We just try to do the best we can and to go on with it. It would be nice if we'd done a little bit better and not gotten in that crash at Dover [when Tony Stewart crashed in front of Kahne and swept him into it].

I kind of messed up at Kansas, trying to be more aggressive than we probably needed to be that early in the Chase. But we'll just keep on getting it and see where we end up.

Q: How do you feel about the peaks and valleys aspect of racing, and the roller-coaster ride you always seem to be on? Do you enjoy it, detest it -- or it's just part of it?

Francis: There are a lot of ups and downs. We've had a great year so far with six wins, and we've got five poles, plus the pole for the [Nextel Challenge] All-Star race.

We've had a lot of good races, but we've had a lot of bad ones, too. We've had a lot of downs. You know, we win the second Charlotte race and then we have to fly down the Homestead the next day and go test -- you're right back in the grind, struggling to make the car turn and to make the car work.

So it's pretty hard to celebrate when you do good. It seems like no matter where you're at in the garage area -- and I've been in all kind of different positions there, in the points and with this team or other teams.

And no matter where you're at, everyone's struggling to do the best you can, all the time. So that's the hardest thing to deal with, is that you never get a break no matter where you're at.

You can be winning 10 races a year or you can be struggling to make races and it doesn't matter. You're just pretty much fighting or your life; at least that's what it feels like, the whole time.

Q: You guys have been awfully good on the 1.5-mile racetracks this year, getting most of your wins there. How did you manage to do that?

Francis: We figured out a little bit of set-up stuff for the intermediate tracks, earlier in the year and we've run good at all of them.

But we've run good at a lot of tracks this year. We ran good at Daytona, the first race of the year and we were gonna run good at the first Talladega race and crashed that car and didn't get to take it back to Daytona.

The car we took to the second Daytona wasn't very good and we didn't run very good, so we went back to Talladega and ran top five there most of the day and ended up second there.

Some of the short tracks we've run really good. At Martinsville in the first race we were running pretty good and looking for a top-five and had an engine problem. The second race we ran second and felt like we should have run top-five.

We run good at Richmond and ran decent at Loudon but we just got shuffled around there at the end of the race and in the first Phoenix we ran good -- so I feel like we've run good at a lot of the tracks -- it's just been the mile-and-a-halfs where Kasey seems to excel as far as how to work those tracks.

But we've had a couple of bad mile-and-a-halfs, too, if you look at Chicago and Kansas. We weren't real good -- not as good as we wanted to be, there. It wasn't like we were gonna run last, but we wasn't as good as we wanted to be.

Q: The set-up discovery on the 1.5's -- was it in the bodies, suspension, or what?

Francis: I don't know [exactly] what it is. It's probably a whole combination of how we interpret our data and how we interpret our aero data and how we look at our tire stuff.

It's just how we approach our whole way of doing things, is probably a lot different than what a lot of people are used to.

Q: To you, what is it about Kasey's driving style that enables him to excel at those 1.5-mile tracks?

Francis: I really don't know what it is, but he's just able to find the limit. The tracks are so fast and the tires don't have a lot of grip and he's just able to find that edge and stay close to it all the time.

He's able to work different grooves and stuff and if a groove opens up, he'll go find it, so I think that's one of the other things that contribute to it.

Q: It sounds like some of what you're talking about comes from his open-wheel, short-track, out-of-control almost Sprint Car and Midget experiences -- so do you find that to be the case?

	Credit: Autostock
	Chase for the Nextel Cup After Atlanta (7th of 10 races) Rank +/- Driver Behind 1. -- M. Kenseth Leader 2. +1 J. Johnson -26 3. +1 D. Hamlin -65 4. +2 D. Earnhardt Jr. -84 5. -- J. Burton -84 6. -4 K. Harvick -121 7. +2 J. Gordon -146 8. -1 M. Martin -201 9. -1 K. Kahne -210 10. -- Ky. Busch -249 • Complete standings, click here

Francis: I don't know if that has a lot to do with it. I think driving high horsepower cars does. He came from winged Sprints, but he drove a lot of Midget stuff, too -- with no wing.

He's just driven a lot of different kinds of dirt cars and pavement cars, Champ Cars [USAC Silver Crown] -- so the versatility of it probably does have something to do with it.

But he got used to running really high horsepower cars when he was pretty young and I think that's important for young drivers now.

You've got to develop a style that works so that you can run lower horsepower stuff, but you really need to have experience with high horsepower stuff, too, that you've really got to modulate the throttle a lot and kind of stay on top of it.

There are a lot of guys that come from the lower horsepower stuff that run really good. Denny Hamlin's a great example of that, but I think his experience has helped Kasey a lot.

Q: Which car do you plan to take to Texas, and what's its history?

Francis: To Texas we're taking car 131, which is the car we just won Charlotte with. We ran it at the All-Star, ran, sat on the pole and were leading it and crashed with Mark Martin.

We fixed it from Charlotte and took it back to the second Dover race and it was gonna be really good. We didn't qualify where we expected to qualify and that surprised us -- we didn't know what happened there.

But we had a really good race setup in it and just never got a chance to show it [when Stewart wrecked]. So we fixed it again and brought it to Charlotte and won the race, so it's a good car.

Q: What is the critical setup issue at Texas to get a good lap in qualifying?

Francis: I don't really know. Texas qualifying is really all about keeping your foot in it. You've got to have good balance -- the car can't be loose.

You've got to have the back of the car snugged-up pretty good where he doesn't have to chase the back of the car. Normally, they'll turn good enough so you can usually get them to turn pretty good.

You've got a lot more options in qualifying trim than you do in race trim, so the biggest thing is just getting the back of the car tight enough and just making sure you've got the front to where it will cut good enough for one lap.

Q: When you transfer that over to a 500-mile race setup, what's the most critical thing you're concerned with?

Francis: The most critical thing is you've got to keep the car turning the whole race -- you've got to keep the front-end working -- and that's pretty hard once you take the tape off the nose, you know, from qualifying to race trim.

You lose a lot of downforce so it makes it really hard to keep the front tires working "in the track," as a lot of the drivers call it.

You don't want to get the back too loose, but you can deal with it a little bit more in race trim because that's a pretty smooth track and it's got a lot of options where you can run a couple different lines, so you can adjust.

Just the main thing is to keep the front turning good.

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Q: Do you monitor Chase points during the races?

Francis: Honestly I don't. I don't pay much attention to it. After the race, I'll ask where we ended up -- but I don't during the race.

If you asked me now, I'd probably tell you the wrong points [laughing].

Q: Strategically or goal-wise do you adjust anything with three races left in the Chase?

Francis: It's still the same mindset we've had all season. You just try to do the best that you can. I still want to try to win the race because we want to win some more races before the year is over.

But if you win the race, you get the most points, so that takes care of itself. You definitely don't want to take any dumb chances, you know? But you never know what you have to do to win and you never know what you're going to be up against, so you just have to try to figure it out as you go.

Q: No matter what happens in the stretch, how would you classify this season for your team?

Francis: I think we've had a great year. I think we've run good at probably 80 percent of the tracks. We feel like we've got a couple of tracks we need to work on.

So I think we had a pretty successful year, no matter what happens. I think we've got some stuff to build on for next year, for sure.