With Francis, Kahne ready to climb out of early hole

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- He has the boyish movie-star looks. He has fame, complete with captivating television commercials.

And last year he had six victories, more than any other driver in the Nextel Cup Series.

So what in the heck is Kasey Kahne doing sweating out this weekend in the hopes of cracking the top 35 in Cup owner points? Even he doesn't seem so sure of all the reasons why; he's only certain that time is rapidly running out to start turning his season around.

"We've got to start over a little bit," Kahne said. "We've dug ourselves a little hole here."

Kahne will start over in his No. 9 Dodge on Sunday with team director Kenny Francis back on the pit box. The team struggled badly while Francis served a four-race suspension levied by NASCAR after qualifying for the season-opening Daytona 500. Along with the suspension for allegedly altering Kahne's car to give it an aerodynamic advantage, the No. 9 team also was docked 50 driver points and 50 owner points.

Throw in a blown engine in the second race of the season at California, a crash the following week in Las Vegas and the fact that he got caught up in another wreck that was not his fault but relegated him to a 39th-place finish last week in Atlanta, and it all has added up.

The numbers are startling. Heading into Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, Kahne sits 36th in driver point standings. More importantly, the No. 9 team sits 37th in owner points; after the Bristol race, the fifth of the season, only the top-35 teams in owner points will be guaranteed starting positions for the remainder of the season.

So if Kahne doesn't have a good run Sunday, he could be on the outside looking in at having to qualify on speed for each of the remaining Cup races this season. It is a prospect he could not have envisioned at the beginning of this season. But he said he isn't letting himself get depressed about it -- at least not yet.

"I haven't been down at all," he said. "I think we can turn it around still. It's not like we're out of the Chase or out of the top 35. We can get right back in there this weekend, and then next weekend we can keep gaining. So I still feel pretty decent about it. It's not the end of the world, yet."

Kahne said that getting Francis back this weekend is a boost, and it appeared to pay immediate dividends in qualifying when Kahne turned a lap of 125.313 mph that was second-fastest. He will start next to pole-sitter Jeff Gordon on the front row Sunday, although he has qualified well for other races this season and knows that it is no guarantee for a strong finish -- especially at a place as unpredictable and often painfully brutal as Bristol.

Francis said that his return will instantly improve race-day communications with Kahne, which he said is a highly underrated aspect of getting any race team to operate with a high degree of efficiency.

Francis returns atop No. 9 team's pit box

Team director Kenny Francis is back just in time for Kasey Kahne and Ray Evernham, who go to Bristol one spot out of the top 35 in owner points.

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"That's something I had to work hard at when I first started the crew chief job four or five years ago -- talking on the radio," Francis said. "It's a lot harder than it might seem to get a good rapport going over the radio.

"People that know me know it's just a lot different in how you act when you try to talk to a driver during the race. You've got to know when to update him with the right information. [The crew chief] has got to keep that information flow going back and forth. [The driver] has got to tell us what the car is doing.

"We've got to tell him how the race is progressing and the big picture of what everything looks like. I think that's one of the biggest things. It took me a long time to get that really figured out, how to do that. That's a lot more important than I think people give it credit for."

Kahne knows it is an important part of the equation to success for him -- or lack of success, when it's missing. But he said the absence of Francis has been only part of the reason for his struggles this season. Some of it has been his own doing; much of it, he insists, has been bad luck.

Francis agreed with that assessment.

"We're sweating it out, trying to jump a couple of spots here at Bristol and get back in the top 35," Francis said. "Hopefully, we can have a good run. We're certainly due for a good finish. We've had some good runs. We just haven't finished the races."

Kahne said lofty preseason expectations simply haven't matched up with reality, yet.

"We expected to have our crew chief. We expected to be winning races. We expected all kinds of stuff," Kahne said. "This is a pretty tough deal. Some teams have it and some teams don't. We hope to have it real soon."