In any given season, a NASCAR driver will likely race a minimum of 15,000 miles and if you add in the miles traveled for offseason testing and time inside their personal cars, the number could nearly double.

So why in the world do these men drive during their downtime?

I realize it's nothing new -- plenty of racers retreat to a dirt track or climb into a late model the first off weekend away from the Sprint Cup Series schedule, but I couldn't help but wonder why?

“

There's some of us that want to do other things, then there's some of us that just love racing. If you get a chance, you do it.

”

-- KASEY KAHNE

To me it's like a mailman, or postal worker to be correct, taking a walk on his day off, a taxi cab driver going for a Sunday drive: redundant perhaps, and borderline overkill.

But according to a few of the drivers who do this -- Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch, Kasey Kahne, etc. -- driving on their day off has an opposite effect.

Going to a dirt track is how Stewart recharges his battery so to speak. Busch isn't breathing unless he's in a car. And Kahne said he doesn't know to do anything different.

"I look at it as we love to race, that's what we want to do," Kahne said.

And traveling to a short-track race across the country to maybe his home state of Washington doesn't come with the demands and anxiety of the Cup Series; the same degree of pressure just isn't there.

"Everybody wants to win, everybody wants to run well, get the points every weekend. When we go and do the other races, you don't necessarily have to win, but you still want to. It's just a little bit of a different feeling," Kahne said. "You can do it in kind of like a vacation and you're still racing, still enjoying yourself, doing what I think each one of us drivers really wants to do."

This is why Kahne -- just before the Cup Series traveled north to Watkins Glen International -- didn't mind adding two races to his already packed calendar almost immediately following his 500-mile event at Pocono on Monday.

From Monday to Sunday, the week will have seen Kahne racing stock cars, sprint cars and USAC Silver Crown cars across a variety of race tracks, both ovals and a road course, pavement and dirt.

Wednesday night, Kahne hosted the short track charity race Ollie's Bargain Outlet "Battle at the Grove" at Williams Grove Speedway where the driver raced 360/358 Sprints and fellow competitor Busch raced Super Late Models on the half-mile dirt oval to benefit the Kasey Kahne Foundation and the Ronald McDonald House Charities.

"It's fun to get back and be a part of short track racing again," Kahne said. "To me, that's where some of most fun racing you will ever do is and we all know Kyle enjoys racing. He does whatever it takes to win races. He's aggressive and for a race like this it's great for him to come out and be a part of it and show the fans that he loves short-track racing as well as I do."

Thursday night, Kahne traveled to the paved Oswego Speedway in upstate New York for the Kasey Kahne Steel Palace Classic, a USAC K&N Silver Crown Series short-track race that also featured driver Ryan Newman, the 1999 USAC Silver Crown champion.

Kahne ends his week at The Glen, looking to notch his second road-course win of the season on Sunday.

"I think it will be tough to win them both, but we had a great car at Sonoma. Things went our way and we were able to hold off Tony Stewart late in the race, which is tough to do," he said. "We are taking the same car and will run similar set-ups and work on it from there."

So from Pennsylvania on Monday to New York on Sunday, Kahne will have wracked up 798 miles over four different race tracks in three different types of cars.

The moral of the story is when you love what you do, in this case racing, there is no such thing as overkill.

"There's some of us that want to do other things, then there's some of us that just love racing," Kahne explained. "If you get a chance, you do it."