DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Kasey Kahne did what he had to at Daytona International Speedway, and by finishing second in the Coke Zero 400, the driver moved in the right direction toward a Chase-qualified position in the standings.

Kahne and his No. 9 team shook off the effects of going to a backup car on Thursday and finished .092 seconds behind race winner Kevin Harvick. For the sixth consecutive Cup race, an RPM car was the best-placed Ford in the field.

And even more important, Kahne bounced back from a blown engine last weekend at New Hampshire that knocked him back to 20th in the standings.

"Yeah, we have no margin for error [to make the Chase] -- we had to pick up points again and it's been like, four or five straight weeks that we've been a top-five car," Kahne said. "So it feels good to have a car that good, and the guys are doing a nice job. If we keep doing that -- and that's all we can do -- we can't screw up any more, and hopefully we don't, just do our best job and not make any mistakes."

For the third time in the past four weeks, Kahne has finished in the top five, enabling him to unofficially jump four spots in the standings, to 16th. That's 154 points behind 12th place Carl Edwards and was a gain of 20 over the 174-point deficit he had to 12th coming into Daytona.

"You had to be aggressive and drive your car sideways all night long -- that's just the way it was," Kahne said. "I felt like I had one of the best cars from start to finish. Even hitting the wall I still felt like we had a great car."

Kahne suspected he had hit oil on the race track when he smacked the wall and partly spun as he tried to negotiate Turns 3 and 4 on the 117th lap.

"It was just a wild race," Kahne said. "I really enjoyed it. I don't know if the tires were wrong or not, but I thought it was pretty exciting." (Continued)