Kasey Kahne, No. 9 Budweiser Dodge Charger
Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway
Budweiser Racing Team Notes of Interest
· As the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season comes to a close this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway (HMS), Kasey Kahne will try to solidify his position in the top 10 in the driver point standings.
· Kahne is currently 10th in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver point standings, 65 points behind ninth-place driver Ryan Newman and 44 points ahead of 11th-place driver Carl Edwards.
· In five starts at HMS, Kahne has one top-five and two top-10 finishes with an average finish of 18th.
· Kahne has posted four top-five starting positions at the 1.5-mile oval and has an average starting position of sixth.
· Kahne will be available for interviews with motorsports media members at Homestead-Miami Speedway this Friday, November 20th at approximately 10:45 a.m. behind the Budweiser transporter.
· The No. 9 Budweiser Dodge will feature a special Designate a Driver logo on the decklid for this weekend’s race in Homestead. Your friends at Anheuser-Busch would like to remind you that the year-end holidays from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve provide a great opportunity to encourage the use of designated drivers, so adults can have fun and also get home safely.
· More than 148 million American adults have been or used a designated driver. This holiday season, remember to drink responsibly and choose a designated driver or volunteer to be one.
Kahne discusses the season and racing at Homestead-Miami Speedway
Talk about racing this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway. “I’ve always liked Homestead. That’s where I won my first Nationwide race and I’ve run well there in a Cup car. Every year, we seem to qualify good there. It’s a different track. The banking…you go into Turn 1 and it is real flat and you hit the banking and you’ve already started turning. It’s kind of similar in (Turn) 3 and off of (Turn) 4. It flattens out before the exit of the corner, so it’s different. Your car changes a lot. But it’s a pretty neat track and I like racing there. I like trying to close the year out strong. We’ve been able to do that a couple of times there. I made a couple of mistakes there, but hopefully we’ll close out the year strong and finish top 10 in points. That’s all that we can shoot for.”
Can consistency be determined by the preparation of the racecar before it gets to the race track? “I think so. I don’t understand how some teams get so far ahead. I do understand that when you have a car that’s right – I’ve had some this year and we’ve won – it’s a different ballgame. You feel like a completely different driver. You just have to keep on working to get the cars the best that they can be when we unload them. The teams that are winning have them (great cars). Those drivers are doing a great job – the teams are doing a great job – we need to figure out how to catch up to them.”
How would you describe your season? “I feel like we’ve had a good season. I think you have to have different expectations for where you’re at in your career and where you’re at with your team and company. For where we’re at, the 9 guys, our whole team, myself included, this is probably the year that I’ve crashed the least in any year that I’ve been in NASCAR. There are a lot of things that we’ve done this year as a team that are much better than what we’ve done in the past. It’s just things that we can build on and try to stick together and make progress moving into next season.”
