It’s been a while since Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Kasey Kahne has been in Victory Lane.
How long? Well, the hail mary at Atlanta Motor Speedway in August 2014 where Kahne passed leader Matt Kenseth in the second green-white-checkered finish to be exact.
Kahne’s 17th career victory and first since August 2013 at Pocono Raceway surged Kahne into NASCAR’s Chase (now known as the playoffs).
Since then, Kahne and his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports team haven’t won or been in NASCAR’s playoffs – managing just to pull 24 top-10 finishes in 83 races.
Not good enough.
You don’t have to drill it into Kahne’s head though.
He knows he needs to preform, he knows he needs to win, but in order to win you must have a car good enough to win. For whatever reason, Kahne and his team haven’t been able to flex their muscle and put a winning car on the track.
“I think it is more optimism and just feeling good about where we went last year,” Kahne said Wednesday at the annual NASCAR Media Tour in uptown Charlotte. “Where we started consistent 18th to 20th was not anything that we wanted and after the last 12 to 14 races we were eighth to 10th, so that jump, that consistency that we showed throughout the whole season for the speed of the car I thought was good.
“We are working hard to make another jump because eighth to 10th isn’t where we want to be either.
“Definitely, a lot of progress from where we were the first half of the season to where we ended; we can only build on that. We know where we made those gains as a company and as a team because we made them in both areas and we will just get better from there.”
Sure, last season they showed flashes of light with spotty top-five finishes, but consistency was still hit and miss – and when the train got back on track it was too late.
Too late for 2016 at least. But, it was a good jump on 2017.
In the last 12 races, last year, Kahne posted 10 top-15 finishes, including seven top-10 finishes giving the team some much wanted direction on what works and what doesn’t.
With the offseason nearly complete, the real question remains whether Kahne and crew chief Keith Rodden can pick up where they left off. Kahne thinks they can.
“I think first off anytime any of us have a month or two off and we all know we are starting at zero here in a couple of weeks, everybody feels good about it and is excited to get the season started,” he said.
“For me though, a lot of it has to do with the way we finished last year, the progress of the company and the progress of our team. What Jimmie Johnson did; what Chase Elliott did; those things to me were key and they were highlights. Our No. 5 team did the same, we made a lot of gains and we were much stronger the last 12 races of the season.
“Since Monday after Homestead I have been with Keith (Rodden, crew chief), I’ve been with our engineers and all of us as a team, from the pit crew side to the road guys, the guys building the cars, we have been a team and we have been working to progress in those same areas that we made the gains in. We have had a couple of months to do that, so I feel like that is a lot of hard work. Everybody is working hard, but for us we are going in the right direction and it is going to show this year and I’m looking forward to that.”
While winning is always important, the 36-year-old Kahne has an extra incentive to win. His son, Tanner Lee.
“I really want to be in Victory Lane with him,” he said.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
