Smiles finally on faces of No. 9 team's driver, owner

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Less than three weeks after he announced his partnership with NASCAR team owner Ray Evernham, businessman George Gillett Jr. traveled about 5,000 miles one-way to congratulate his driver Kasey Kahne for his second-place finish Saturday night in the Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

There were a lot of smiling faces in the Gillett Evernham Motorsports camp this night, as Kahne, last year's Nextel Cup leader in victories, scored his first top-five finish in his No. 9 Dodge in the season's 24th race.

Maybe the most telling stat was Kahne leading 305 of 500 laps, after leading only 63 laps total in the 23 races this season before Bristol. He hadn't led a lap in 10 races and scored his first top-five finish since last year's Homestead finale.

George Gillett Jr. handles the business side while Ray Evernham directs the competition side. But that doesn't mean the new co-owner is not a sports fan.

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But on this day, the broadest grin might have belonged to the man who attended his first NASCAR race since becoming the majority owner of Gillett Evernham Motorsports. And a more appropriate label Saturday might have been "sportsman George Gillett."

Gillett said he began his long day in Russia, where he concluded an Atlantic salmon fishing expedition with three of his four sons, then flew to England to watch his Liverpool Football Club win a Barclays Premier League match, and finally arrived in Tennessee at about 6 p.m. ET.

"The fishing was fabulous; the team won the match 2-0, so this has been a good weekend," Gillett said after greeting Evernham and Kahne in the post-race hubbub on pit road. "We had a wonderful experience [in Russia], so all-in-all it was just a great week -- and weekend -- just excellent."

Gillett, whose face resembled a kid's at a carnival, sought out Kahne to congratulate him not only for his Saturday night achievement but also for his victory in Friday night's Food City 250 Busch Series race.

"Good to see you -- nice going," Gillett told Kahne as he shook his hand. "I'm proud of you. What a weekend."

Gillett later told a visitor the excitement he experienced Saturday was partly why he became involved with Evernham.

"It's great," Gillett said. "Because last year, when our teams were competitive all season long, that was a lot more fun."

"It feels good [because] he can't make it to a lot of them," Kahne said, matching Gillett's grin when asked about his owner's itinerary getting to Bristol. "He wanted to be here, I guess."

Kahne, holding a bottle of water in his trembling hand as he wound down from dominating two-thirds of the night on Bristol's new concrete surface -- he was in the top 10 for 497 of 500 laps -- was as equally enthused as his owners.

"It feels good. I think it will feel a lot better [Sunday] when I can think about it and sit back," Kahne said. "To run well -- you know you go into a season and you think you're going to run well [and then] you don't. So heck yeah, I'm gaining confidence. That's a big weekend for us. It felt good to have a strong weekend, to run good in the McDonald's car for the first time and also win the Busch race [Friday] night.

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."