Smiles finally on faces of No. 9 team's driver, owner (cont'd)

The only goal Kahne has left this season is to win races, which he did six times last season, and ultimately try to get back into the top 20 in the standings. After Saturday night, he's unofficially 23rd, 152 points behind 20th-place J.J. Yeley.

"This is a good start for the final 10 [races]," he said. "We want to finish this season strong and start '08 with some momentum. We've struggled, so we want to have a strong end to this season and to look forward to the next one.

"To get a great weekend here like we did this weekend feels good. It was fun -- it was exciting to get a good run in our Dodge Avenger. It has been a while since we've had a top-five -- it's been a while since we've run up front all night long and had a pole.

"We just kind of put the whole thing together. The whole team stepped up and did a really good job. We are just going to try and carry it on. Next weekend we're back to California and we are back to that same car that we ran 31st with last week, so hopefully we do something this week to make that performance come up a touch next week."

Kahne is one man who's thankful that half of the remaining 12 races this season will be in the Car of Tomorrow -- the only thing he's scored a top-10 finish in this season besides seventh- and ninth-place runs on Daytona's superspeedway.

"The No. 9 car was definitely stronger [Saturday] than what it's been," Kahne said. "These guys have spent a lot of time trying to develop that [Car of Tomorrow] and make it faster and make it better.

"I'm looking forward to running that car the rest of the year when we do. You know, next weekend we go to California and I wish that was a COT race, but it's not."

Along with letting the weekend's achievement sink in, Kahne's anticipating a trip home to the state of Washington.

"I'm going to do a couple Sprint Car races this week and enjoy myself and go home," Kahne said. "We have a charity race for the Kasey Kahne Foundation Wednesday night at Skagit Speedway and Tony [Stewart] is coming. It'll be a blast and hopefully we raise a lot of money for the Ronald McDonald House."