Former owner Ray Evernham: ‘… There’s a championship driver in there’
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In the beginning, it came easy for Kasey Kahne.
Fast cars and a great team and all of a sudden there’s a new young gun for the established stars to deal with each weekend in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series.
“Yeah, everything was pretty simple back then,” Kahne, 35, says. “Every time I got in the car we were fast — practice, qualifying, race.
“Today it’s a little different; it’s more difficult to be on top. I think part of it is the competition, it’s so close today that it makes it tougher.”
The competition’s tough, certainly, but finding that feeling behind the wheel, the one that often separates the winners from the losers, can be just as difficult.
That’s what Kahne enjoyed in those early years, back in 2004 and ’05 and ’06, and it’s what he is searching for today. It’s also what crew chief Keith Rodden is trying to find for his driver each and every day when he shows up for work.
“If you hit on something that really suits your driving, you can be on top and you can be there for a period of time,” Kahne says. “That’s what we’re looking for, that’s what we hope to hit on eventually.”
The quest continues this weekend at Daytona International Speedway, site of Sunday night’s Coke Zero 400 (7:45 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR).
Kasey Kahne has won 17 times at NASCAR’s top level. He has never won a restrictor-plate points race.
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He was just 23 when he made his Sprint Cup Series debut, finishing near the bottom of the order in the 2004 Daytona 500 after the engine soured just 42 laps into the season-opening race.
But any questions about team owner Ray Evernham’s decision to hire the youngster were quickly put to rest. A week after his disappointing Daytona debut, Kahne finished second at Rockingham, North Carolina. After an early-season off-week, Kahne was second again, this time at Las Vegas.
All told, Kahne finished second five times as a rookie, then added a sixth early the following season. By the season’s 11th stop, at Richmond, he was no longer second — he was in Victory Lane.
A year later, he won six times, more than any other driver in the series, including champion Jimmie Johnson. By the time Evernham Motorsports became Gillett Evernham Motorsports in the latter stages of ’07, Kahne had seven wins and the look of a future champion.
And then it slowly began to unravel.
The wins haven’t ceased — he’s won 10 times since that memorable ’06 season — but the championships have thus far failed to materialize. The Gillett Evernham partnership eventually dismantled and by ’09, the Enumclaw, Washington, native had moved on to Richard Petty Motorsports for a two-year stint. A stint with Red Bull Racing followed, before team owner Rick Hendrick came calling, looking for a suitable replacement for veteran Mark Martin.
In 2012, Kahne settled in as the newest member of one of the most successful organizations in NASCAR. While he’s qualified for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup all three years he’s been at HMS, he’s slowly been trending in the wrong direction, finishing fourth, 12th and 15th in points since his arrival.
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Where did the kid with so much talent and promise go?
“I don’t know,” says Evernham, now back at HMS as a member of the organization’s executive management team. “I really pushed Mr. Hendrick to hire him because I really feel like Kasey Kahne is a guy that should win a championship.
“We’ve not been able to get him over that hump. I certainly still believe in him. I think Keith Rodden has helped Kasey’s confidence. They’re still kind of sorting out their cars and things like that. I don’t know. I will be disappointed if Kasey Kahne ends his career without winning a championship.
“He’s got the talent, he’s got the ability, and he’s got the cars and equipment. I don’t know — communication, changes, where he’s at … again, I can’t answer that. It’s something we talk about a lot.”
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Kahne, who has six top-10 finishes through this year’s first 16 races, arrives in Daytona eighth in points. His last win came in Atlanta last season, and it was his only win of the year.
Still, he says, he believes his team is making gains.
Driver Reports: How will Kahne fare at Daytona?
“I think our cars are super close, our engines and our packages are right there,” Kahne says. “I feel good about that.
“It’s just a matter of keep trying to find that little bit of feel. That’s what Martin Truex has right now; that’s what Kevin Harvick has had for a year and a half. Just that feel. They have it and they know how to find it each week. Their teams do a really nice job with that and the drivers do a great job with it. That’s what I’m looking for. I just hope I can find that feel that gives me just … you just floor it a touch sooner every lap and you go as fast as they do.”
Kahne knows the feel, although he jokes that “it’s been a while since I’ve had it, so it’s hard to remember.
“I know it feels good,” he says. “It gives you confidence; you feel like you can run (with anyone), you feel like you can win and you can battle at any time. You’re better on restarts, you’re better in traffic and you’re better when you’re on your own.
“When you do have that feel, you just always seem to be a tenth or two better and it helps every part of the race weekend.”
Every driver that’s been around for the past decade has had to deal with tremendous changes in the cars as one generation was pushed aside for newer, safer vehicles. Some have had to alter their driving styles, adapting to cars that suddenly had more downforce but could be a handful around others.
A fortunate few found the changes worked in their favor and no changes were necessary.
“The interesting thing is today we run so much throttle compared to what we used to run,” says Kahne. “When I first came in (to the series) you were off the throttle for a good period of time, you’d ease back to it and then floor it.
“Today it’s on and off. It’s like a light switch. And the percentage of the time that you’re wide open today compared to then is much higher. I think some of those things haven’t fit my driving style as well as I would have liked. As a driver, I need to keep working on that stuff and figure out how to make it fit my driving style.
“I think when I first came into the sport, it was all about getting off the brake as fast as you could and getting back to throttle as soon as possible. If you weren’t wide open that was OK, you were still part throttle and still gaining speed.
“Today, it’s like push the brake hard for a split second, get off it and hammer the throttle hard. Your off-throttle time is very small. It’s just so much different driving these cars today. I’m up for the challenge, but I think as we’ve gone through the changes (to the cars), it’s been a little more difficult for the way I learned to race.”
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For the majority of his career, Kahne was paired with crew chief Kenny Francis. That changed during the most recent off-season when Hendrick officials put former lead engineer Keith Rodden in charge.
Rodden is one of the new breed, an engineer that has transitioned into the role of crew chief. But carrying a degree, he said, doesn’t mean an engineer will make a successful crew chief.
“Absolutely not. It just doesn’t matter,” Rodden says.
“When you’re the crew chief, you’ve got to be the leader of the team, you have to work well with all the NASCAR people, you’ve got to be able to take all the information from all the people you have working whether it’s the engineer, the tire guy or literally the janitor sweeping the shop … you have to use everyone’s input.”
Rodney Childers, crew chief for defending series champion Kevin Harvick “is very methodical,” he says. “He’s a great racer. He probably could have gone to engineering school. He didn’t, he went to race. Whereas Matt McCall (crew chief for driver Jamie McMurray), he’s a great racer. He went to engineering school at home and kept racing.
“I think there are examples where it’s easy to say it works and others where it doesn’t. Just like (Tony Gibson) on the 41, he’s got (Johnny) Klausmeier he relies on a lot.”
Gibson is crew chief of the Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet with driver Kurt Busch.
“I think the biggest thing is just using all the input from all your guys,” Rodden said. “It’s too big for one person.”
His cars have had speed this year, although Rodden takes no credit for that. Part of the reason, he says, may be the current rules package, one that features less downforce and less horsepower.
“We don’t really worry about the speed as much as trying to get the car to driving good because that always seems to race a little bit better,” he says. “You get sad maybe if you’re not quite as fast as another car but we work on trying to get our car to drive good and have good speed, instead of just maybe being on the verge of spinning out every lap and being fast. Being smart about it, too.”
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NASCAR is a team sport, but Kahne knows his role is vital. As he goes, the fortunes of the No. 5 team follow.
Teams have gotten smarter and worked harder through the various changes in the cars in recent years.
“That’s where as a driver you need to be able to adapt and be able to do your part,” Kahne says. “I feel like I’m always close but I don’t feel like I’m ever that guy on top.
“There were times in ’05 and ’06 for sure when I felt I was as fast as anyone in this garage on a lot of occasions. And there have been times like that since, but just not as many. It’s the way it goes.
“I still have a lot of drive, I still want to race cars. I want to win races. I think if you have all that and you have that passion that eventually you’ll get it figured out and get back on top.”
No one would be more pleased to see that happen than Evernham, the former championship-winning crew chief with driver Jeff Gordon.
“We’re still searching for that key to unlock because I know there’s a big part of Kasey Kahne in there,” Evernham says. “He’s 35 years old; we’ve got to unlock that but I believe that there’s a championship driver in there.”