Kahne snags three post-race awards in Darlington

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- For the second consecutive week, the No. 4 Toyota driven by Kasey Kahne nabbed a top-five finish, collecting three post-race contingency awards at Darlington on Saturday night.

Kahne, who started the weekend by claiming his first Coors Light Pole award of the season, proceeded to lead a race high 124 laps during the Showtime Southern 500. Always near the front, the No. 4 Toyota led 53 of the final 88 laps before being passed by eventual winner Regan Smith with 11 laps remaining.

Kahne's team also claimed the American Ethanol Green Flag Restart award, which goes to the eligible driver who records the fastest average speed on restarts and finishes the race on the lead lap, and the Mobil 1 Driver of the Race award.

The No. 4 team recovered from a scrape with the infamous Darlington wall on Lap 92 and worked on the car and used strong pit stops to keep the team in contention.

Kahne used strong restarts during a race that included 11 caution flags to continuously stay at the front of the field during the race. After a two-tire stop, Kahne restarted fifth for the green-white-checkered finish and was able to get by Tony Stewart and held off a charging Ryan Newman for the fourth spot.

The awards are part of the NASCAR Prize Money and Decal program, also referred to as the contingency program, which provides teams prize money and weekly awards based on performance in several categories.

"I hit the wall once and I hit it really hard so I screwed up the right side and we had to work on it after that," Kahne said. "The guys did a good job of keeping me upfront with pit stops and kept working on the car to make it as good as we could. I'm a little disappointed with fourth, disappointed with myself, but other than that the Red Bull team was awesome. The car was great. Qualifying first helped a ton [Saturday] -- having that first pit stall."

Also of note this week, Bob Osborne, crew chief of the No. 99 Ford driven by Carl Edwards, claimed his third DIRECTV Crew Chief of the Race award of the season.

With the fourth in Darlington and a third-place finish in Richmond a week earlier, Kahne has moved three spots up to 15th in the 2011 Sprint Cup Series points standings heading into the FedEx 400 benefiting Autism Speaks on Sunday at Dover (1 p.m. ET, FOX).