RICHMOND, Va. -- There was no question Kasey Kahne knew just how significant his third-place finish in Saturday night's Crown Royal presents the Matthew and Daniel Hansen 400 was, but just as significant was what Kahne was looking forward to doing Monday.

Just before he left the grounds of Richmond International Raceway, Kahne said he was most looking forward to getting back on his road bike for some cardiovascular exercise.

"My knee feels fine," Kahne said. "It's actually a little bit tight, a bit swelled-up, maybe. But other than that, it feels fine. I never thought about it once throughout the race, so it was more about the car. So if you're not thinking about it, it's obviously not hurting."

In the downtime between Talladega and Richmond, Kahne had undergone his third knee procedure. He had no concern about his knee pre-race, and despite walking into the media center a little stiffly, he was more aware of how important it was to turn his season -- a one-shot deal with Red Bull Racing -- back toward a qualified spot in the Chase.

Three races ago, Kahne was in a points-qualified position. But three bad runs in a row had knocked him back to 18th in the standings. Then came Richmond, and Kahne was one of only two men in the race, along with second-place finisher Denny Hamlin, who was scored in the top-10 at every segment of the race.

"We had a bad one at Martinsville, a bad one at Talladega -- just didn't run very well at Texas," Kahne summed-up. "So we've had three of them in a row. So we needed a good run [Saturday] night. We definitely did [and] we did it. We hung up there throughout the whole race."

Kahne and crew chief Kenny Francis went in the wrong direction on one adjustment, but they quickly fixed it and were never really too far out. Kahne actually led 29 laps in one stretch -- a stark contrast to the rest of the season, where he'd led only two laps, in two different races.

"It's kind of been a while since we had a car that could win," Kahne said. "At points [Saturday] I felt like we had a shot. Early on, I thought I was driving away. It was a solid night for us.

"The adjustment, we tried to get it to turn just a little bit better without making it any freer off the corner. It took the back out of the track, then I was just kind of up out of the track more -- it was worse. So we went down [another adjustment] the next stop. It was probably only 50 laps. It wasn't one of the long green flag runs that we did it on. It probably hurt us for six, seven spots."

Even though Kahne remained 18th in the standings -- with Hamlin remaining one spot ahead of him, in 17th -- they both gained a lot of ground on the five guys ahead of them. Race winner Kyle Busch, Hamlin's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, pulled away, though.

"The Gibbs guys were the guys to beat again here," Kahne said. "We came to third, so that was good. I felt strong where we kind of ended up, how things went, how things played out throughout the race. Our guys did a really nice job, but we definitely need to keep working to catch up to a few of these other guys."

Fuel was a worry -- and a definite problem -- for a number of competitors, but not Kahne.

"Actually didn't have too many concerns with fuel," Kahne said. "They told me to save. We had so many caution laps there, it was during that big wreck I think with Jeff [Gordon] on the backstretch. I saved the whole time. I thought if we were close before, I should easily be fine. It never concerned me after that."

Kahne was definitely aware that, with the tracks coming up, including Darlington and Charlotte, getting out of Richmond well was a key.

"I think that's something they're working on pretty hard at Red Bull ever since Texas," Kahne said. "We kind of realized that we're not as good on some of those tracks where there's a lot of load in the front tires, things when you get into the corner, to keep the car turning throughout the race. That's something we've already started working on.

"Darlington, we're going to need to be better. After that, Dover, Charlotte, the next four or five races -- we've been looking at it. I thought we could run really well here. Now, we need to make some good changes here before Darlington and Dover if we want to run good at those tracks."