Fast fade for Kahne
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Kasey Kahne seemed poised for a breakthrough season six weeks ago. Now, he's on the verge of a breakdown.
Five finishes outside the top 20, including 31st and 36th in his last two races, have dropped him to 11th in points and in real danger of not making NASCAR'S Chase for the Nextel Cup championship.
"I missed it the last two years, so I need to make it," said Kahne, who was third in points after winning at Michigan in mid-June, his fourth victory in a 12-race span. "It's a big deal."
Entering Sunday's race at Watkins Glen International, Kahne is 37 points behind the 10th-place driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr. The top 10 in the standings — and any others within 400 points of the leader after the first 26 races — qualify for the 10-race Chase.
Barring a total meltdown in the next five races by leader Jimmie Johnson, who's 512 points ahead of Earnhardt, there will be only 10 drivers vying for the title for the third straight year. Earnhardt, who failed to make the Chase a year ago, climbed back into the top 10 after a sixth-place finish last week at Indianapolis. He and the crew of his No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet used pit strategy in the final 20 laps to rally from 28th place.
"Well, it wasn't exactly how we drew it up, but it's nice to get back into the top 10," Earnhardt said. "We're by no means out of the woods. It'll probably go right down to the wire."
That is almost a certainty. Just 171 points separate third from 11th place, and Kahne only trails the seventh-place driver, rookie Denny Hamlin, by 73.
Sunday's AMD at The Glen is the 22nd race of the season and the second and final road race of 2006. Kahne finished 17th here last year and 14th as a rookie in 2004, but on the road course at Sonoma in June he showed signs that the tutoring sessions with road race ace Boris Said and Bill Elliott, the man he replaced in the No. 9 Evernham Motorsports Dodge Charger, were beginning to have a positive effect. He qualified sixth and ran as high as eighth before a flat tire with four laps left relegated him to 31st.
"We've done really well, especially on the ovals," said Kahne, who wrecked on the last lap a week ago at Indy to spoil what seemed a certain top-10 finish. "But in the road racing, we've just been all right. There's a couple of things we're working on to get better. When we get to Watkins Glen, we'll be a top-10 car.
"It's not the end of the world. Maybe when we have a chance to win, we won't have that bad luck."
Greg Biffle's bad luck has mirrored Kahne's. Biffle also crashed last week on the final lap, which dropped him from a certain top-15 finish to 33rd. He now sits 12th, 115 points behind Earnhardt.
"It's been an up-and-down season for us, but I still feel five races is a lot of time," said Biffle, who has led a series-best 1,237.51 miles this year. "We saw drivers go from being in the top five in points to being out and then back in in a matter of four races or three. Certainly, people can move around a lot.
"But this is the time of the season where teams and drivers are being more consistent, are getting their stride, getting their consistency down," said Biffle, who was expected to contend for this year's title after finishing second last year to Tony Stewart. "So that makes it difficult as well. We need to average top-five finishes."
It doesn't help that three of the "other guys" Biffle is chasing have a history of excellence on The Glen's twisting 11-turn layout: Earnhardt has three consecutive top-10s; Stewart, just seven points ahead of Junior, has won three of the last four races.
