DOVER, Del. -- Richard Petty Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne was long gone from Dover International Speedway's garage area Sunday evening, whisked away from the Monster Mile surrounded by the positive vibes of his second consecutive top-10 finish.

But as daylight faded his No. 9 Dodge's crew chief, Kenny Francis, and his mechanics still surrounded their sixth-place car from the Autism Speaks 400, poking and prodding and pulling off parts as they prepared to go to a tire test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“

It was a good race for us. The new motor had plenty of power, which made the car fun to drive.

”

KASEY KAHNE

But as Kahne had been, Francis was just as enthused about the turnaround that continued Sunday for his team, still rebounding from an evil start to the season by edging a position closer in the standings to qualifying for the Chase.

With his come-from-mid-pack finish, which came a week after they finished seventh in the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600, Kahne moved from 15th to 14th in the driver standings, just 66 points out of a Chase spot halfway to the Race 26 cutoff at Richmond.

Sunday was Kahne's first race with Dodge's new R6 engine package, which Penske Racing has been using to good effect for the better part of the season. Kahne cited that, while Francis included a lot of other work by their RPM crew as the keys, which earned them a front-row start outside pole-sitter David Reutimann.

"We had a good car all day -- a solid top-10 car -- and there are three or four things we're doing that are different," Francis said. "Of course, the biggest thing is the new R6 Dodge engine they've come out with, and our motor shop has really worked hard to get this thing out there, they've accelerated their schedule and went above and beyond to get us a motor to try out, and I think it was definitely better, for sure.

"The guys in the chassis shop and the car shop and the assembly shop have all worked so hard on these cars to make them better. They've worked hand over fist to just make a nicer package and it's really paying off. You can really see it and we've even had guys coming up in the garage and saying they're really nice and we've done a great job -- a lot of little stuff that just makes the whole car cleaner, and losing a little weight here and there, trying to get our center of gravity down -- and I feel like we've caught up, so I'm really proud of all that."

But particularly at Dover, Francis said the new engine was critical.

"Our old engine, the R5, was good for a long time, but it just got behind the times and all these other motor shops and car companies came out with new stuff," Francis said. "We were just kind of behind on the bottom-end torque -- it just didn't accelerate as good. It made good top-end power, good horsepower, but the acceleration up off the corner was where we isolated that we needed some help, and this thing is specifically designed to be better, with a lot different intake manifold and head, and it should be a lot better in that area."

Kahne got caught out by a goofy pit sequence just after the quarter distance, when about half the field had pitted when a caution flew, falling as low as 22nd at Lap 120. He had restarted 21st, a lap down, but how good his car was was proven when he got ahead of race winner and dominator Jimmie Johnson and stayed there until the next caution came out on Lap 165.

After struggling back in heavy traffic for more than 120 laps, he was back in the top 10, where he spent two-thirds of the race.

"It was a good day for our Dodge -- [Greg] Biffle and I were battling all day and it was fun. He ended up second, and we ended up sixth," Kahne said. "It was a good race for us. The new motor had plenty of power, which made the car fun to drive. We were good on pit stops and the car handled well.

"We were just so loose all day, especially on short runs. Our Dodge was great on long runs, but the race had so many debris cautions that it was crazy. As soon as we would get racing, a debris caution would come out and really take the pace away from the race [but] for our team, it was a really good day -- we've made some really big gains the last few weeks."

As bad as it might have been at times, Kahne's day wasn't as frustrating as his teammates -- all of whom started in the top 10 despite only Kahne having the newer, resoundingly better power plant.

For more than half the race, Reed Sorenson, who started fourth, ran around the top 10. He even charged into the lead from Laps 29-32 -- the first time he'd led all year -- but a bad pit stop relegated him to 19th at the finish.

"It was cool to lead those laps at the start ... we had a pretty good day," Sorenson said. "When I could run my line, I could really get a good drive off the corner. That was a tough race, but we're getting there.

"I thought we might get a top-10 finish, but we got the [air] hose caught on the splitter on that stop with about 70 to go and lost some spots. I think it also messed up the car. The Richard Petty Motorsports guys are working hard and that's showing on the track. I hope the way we ran creates some momentum we can take to Pocono with us next weekend and run even better."

Elliott Sadler's No. 19 Dodge ran on the lead lap for about half the race, but ultimately fell to 27th.

"You know we want better and we aren't satisfied by any means with 27th [but] looking on the bright side, we showed progress [Sunday]," Sadler said. "We ran decent. We tried some strategy and that got us to the front. We raced hard and fought to stay on the lead lap [but] we still have a lot of work to do making these cars turn."

A.J. Allmendinger started the race too loose and got caught two laps down by the same pit sequence as Kahne. After that, Allmendinger ran with the top-five cars, at one point passing both Mark Martin and Carl Edwards to get to third in line behind Johnson and second place Denny Hamlin -- but he could never get any of his laps back and finished 29th, four laps down.

"Man, we thought we were going to have a good day [but] that debris caution early [Lap 117] cost us two laps and that killed our day -- the timing for that caution couldn't have come at a worse time for us," Allmendinger said. "At a place like Dover, it's almost impossible to make up two laps. We're having terrible luck and it's frustrating. We deserved better [Sunday]."

Francis agreed the R6 would help his teammates' cars as much as it'd done for Kahne's, but he acknowledged the tough timeframe for getting the engines in place. He said he anticipated all four cars having the R5 at Pocono next weekend before his car, at least, went back to the R6 for Michigan.

"We'd sure love to keep running it, but you've got to look at the logistical side of it," Francis said. "They don't have many of these yet and they've been working their tails off to make them as good as they can make them. The problem is, when you're trying to build 'em and develop more power and more torque, you're in development phase and not production phase, and you can't build a lot of them.

"I'm sure they want to get this [engine] back to the shop and tear it down and look at it, and make sure everything went as expected, but I'd say they're going to be real pleased with it. They may look at this and say, 'Man, let's run it [at Pocono].' But I think they'll stay with the plan.

"You say, 'Gosh, what could it do,' but if it's a tenth of a second, when you look at the lap times, lap after lap on the monitor that's huge, and that's what you're looking at with this stuff. All of a sudden you're running better and you've got more confidence, and even when you get a little bit off, you can still hang on, and that's the big thing.

"We feel confident in our equipment now and that we've got some really good stuff to work with. We've put quite a few good runs together but don't have the great results to show for it -- we had a great car in Darlington and got in a wreck -- but you've got to have that top-10 consistency week in and week out, because then you have that confidence that you need."