Chase Watch: Kasey Kahne squeaks in to the next round as Kurt Busch misses out
Kasey Kahne is moving on to the next round of the Chase despite an unscheduled pit stop under green Sunday at Dover.
Kahne was forced to pit on lap 163 because of an ill-handling race car. It was an unfortunately timed pit stop as the caution flag flew within 10 laps of his pit stop because of J.J. Yeley getting into the wall.
He was trapped off the lead lap.
“I felt like we went four (laps) down at one point when we pitted,” Kahne said. “We had to pit because we had done the wavearound. We had a good Farmer’s Insurance Chevy. I had a fast car. Luckily Kenny made great calls, the team prepared a great car. So I was fortunate to have that and drive our way barely back to advance.”
“But I had to push hard. I’m glad NASCAR let it go and let us race for it.”
Kahne went two laps down just past the halfway point of the race on lap 214. At that point his chances of advancing to the next round of the Chase as one of the top 12 drivers in the points standings looked slim. But thanks to the wavearound on lap 264, Kahne got one lap back and stayed there as the race went green for the last 140 laps.
Kahne finished 20th but it was enough to advance because Kurt Busch slid back over the last portion of the race. With 30 laps to go, Busch’s Stewart-Haas teammate Kevin Harvick passed him for 13th position. That pass, plus a few others put Kahne into the Chase. Busch ended up 18th. He didn’t advance to the next Chase round along with AJ Allmendinger, Greg Biffe and Aric Almirola.
The 12 drivers that are still in championship contention at Kansas will have their points reset to 3,000.
“It just was tight the last 100 miles,” Busch said. “I felt like we were in good position to advance but you just can’t expect to advance by running 15th. You have to be more competitive. We gave it a good run. We put this team together pretty late, Gene Haas believed in me to come do this.”
Allmendinger (13th, 2 points behind Kahne): Allmedinger simply didn’t have the speed he needed to be competitive. He entered Dover 10th in the standings and controlled his own fate. He wasn’t fast enough to do that. He finished 23rd.
While 21st at Dover would have put him in a tie for 12th in the standings, it simply wasn’t possible as the laps ticked down. Allmendinger was the second car two laps down. He would have had to gain another lap to get a shot at another position.
“We sucked overall, all day,” Allmendinger said. “Just weren’t good enough. We didn’t deserve to make it — I’m not disappointed about not making it, I’m just disappointed in running like this. It’s all I had. I’m worn out. I was trying to get every spot possible.”
Biffle (15th, 7 points behind Kahne): Biffle was in that 21st spot, but much like Allmendinger, he didn’t have any speed to make a serious run at a top 10 or advancing to the next round. Much like the other three drivers who didn’t advance, it’s not a huge injustice that Biffle didn’t advance. None of the four eliminated after the first three races had much of a title shot because of a lack of consistency and speed.
Almirola (16th, 18 points behind Kahne): Because of his blown engine at Chicago, Almirola simply didn’t have a points cushion to absorb the impact of a 28th place finish on Sunday. On a day where he would have needed a top 10 to advance, Almirola was off the pace.
“We picked a really bad day to run like that,” Almirola said. “That’s kind of what we fought this year, just really inconsistent. We have really good weeks and really bad weeks, we don’t just ever run consistently and this week was proof of that. We’ve run really good the last five weeks and then this weekend we just missed it.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
