LAS VEGAS -- Kasey Kahne can only hope the inexorable progress he showed during this week's second round of Sprint Cup Preseason Thunder testing is truly a predictor that he and his Gillett Evernham Motorsports team will return to the league-leading level of performance they displayed two seasons ago.

After finishing eighth in the championship in 2006, with six wins, six poles and 19 top-10 finishes Kahne struggled to get a top 10 last season; ending with only eight, including one top-five.

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How ironic that Kahne's latest step in his "comeback" occurred at the same track, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where he says his 2007 season took a dagger to the heart.

"Last year our test went pretty good until I blew a right front tire and crashed my car that I had won all the races with," Kahne said during Tuesday's lunch break. "That was kind of the year at that point."

A year ago, Cup teams came to Vegas to test for the first time after the 1.5-mile speedway had been reconfigured and repaved. Kahne had the fastest speed that Monday afternoon using the Dodge chassis with which he had won a league-high six races the previous season; but crashed it in the closing moments of practice.

Looking back, it seems that event put him and his team into a spiral from which they never recovered. This year; it took him until the last afternoon to get into the top five on the speed chart, but he ended the test very satisfied.

"I feel like we made some pretty good gains so far," Kahne said. "I'm looking forward to [the Car of Tomorrow]. The car -- the more you drive it, the more you work with it -- the better you make it feel [and] the more you like it.

"I'm starting to like this car as far as the way it handles, and it's getting closer to the car we used to have at this place. We just have to keep working, keep fine tuning, and hopefully it will make things good."

With the Car of Tomorrow being the full-time ride for the Sprint Cup this season, Kahne is trading off an increasing affinity for the vehicle, which he said began with a few relatively strong late-season runs.

His four-session test on Monday and Tuesday reinforced it, as Kahne advanced from 33rd on the Monday morning speed chart, at 175.901 mph (30.699 seconds); to fourth on Tuesday afternoon, at 185.217 (29.155) -- an increase of 1.544 seconds.

"The thing that's been tough is we had a car that handled really well and did things a certain way," Kahne said. "We went to the Car of Tomorrow and it was like taking a step back. So on these tracks, it's the same way. It handles so much different, especially when you're off. The more you work with it, the better you get it to do the things that it needs to do to go around the track right [and] the more fun it gets to drive.

"I think mainly it's just a matter of time. The more you work with the car, the better it gets. I'm starting to like it. I mean, I didn't care for it much last year at times. I thought we were pretty far off. Right now we seem like we're kind of in the ballpark [so] we'll keep working and we'll be where we need to be."

Even with his evergreen nature, Kahne's looking forward to kicking off this season in less than three weeks with the Daytona 500, followed up two weeks later with the UAW-Dodge 400 at Las Vegas.

"I think we have a lot to learn still," Kahne said. "But we've made gains. I feel like when we come back for the race we'll be pretty strong.

"But I always feel pretty good about everything. Even last year when we were struggling, going into every Sunday, I thought, 'Hey, we can run good today. We can get things figured out and go fast.'

"A lot of times we didn't. I try to look at the bright side, try to make things right. I think they'll be good this year. It might take us a little while. I'm kind of hoping these kinds of tests -- here and California -- is going to be really good for us."

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this year's test was that Kahne's GEM teammates, the veteran Elliott Sadler and Canadian newcomer Patrick Carpentier, showed plenty of promise as well.

Sadler had two top-10 showings on the four speed charts, including sixth on the final afternoon; while Carpentier, after Kahne took a test-drive in his No. 10 Charger and suggested some set-up improvements, moved up to a session-best 21st on the final time sheet.

"They're trying things, we're trying things," Kahne said. "I just have driven these cars more than Patrick so I have a different way of explaining things compared to what he does. It was good for me to feel what it felt like, and also for his team to kind of listen to me explain it and talk to Patrick about it.

"It wasn't what I would have wanted, but there were certain things his car was doing that were really good, and then there were other things that I didn't care for as much. We talked about that stuff.

"I didn't go any faster than Patrick did. We ran about the same speed in the car. They just need to keep working on it and get him a better platform; a better setup and they'll go faster.

"It's hard to figure that stuff out. It's hard to know -- to get into the sport and know, 'OK, what's a good car, what's a bad car? That feels pretty good. Is that really pretty good or is it not pretty good?' It's difficult."