Kasey Kahne has run 17 Nextel Cup races in his whole life and has finished second in four of them. Yet now, not even halfway through the season, “everybody’s saying he’s overdue,” says his team owner, Ray Evernham. “I think that’s kind of ridiculous.”
Here was Evernham, trying to bring along his talented find methodically through a rookie season. You know, sort of like Evernham, as a crew chief, had brought along a rookie named Jeff Gordon in 1993–no victories nor expectations of winning, just a solid learning curve.
But things were out of hand before the season was a month old.
Kahne, 24, of Enumclaw, Wash., finished second in the second race of the season at Rockingham, N.C., then second the next Sunday at Las Vegas, then third the next week at Atlanta.
Three weeks later came Kahne’s most dazzling appetizer. At Texas Motor Speedway, he raced Elliott Sadler right down to the checkered flag for the victory but lost by a nose because a slower car was in the way.
Kahne’s first victory seemed surely on his fingertips in June at Dover, Del., when he was leading comfortably late in the race only to spin in an oil slick and wreck after NASCAR officials failed to throw a caution soon enough.
Two weeks later at Michigan, Kahne was closing on leader Ryan Newman on the final lap when a caution came out for the final mile, freezing the field and snuffing his charge.
Sunday’s Tropicana 400 is only the 18th of 36 races this season, but no wonder so many–including Kahne himself–consider him overdue.
“Obviously we could have won two races fairly easily, Texas and Dover, without certain circumstances,” Kahne says. “Not counting those two, I think we’re right on track.”
Mainstream media have made him a star to the general public already. People magazine recently named him one of America’s “50 Hottest Bachelors,” and trotted him out to a San Francisco Bay Area appearance in conjunction with last Sunday’s race at Sonoma, Calif.
Evernham keeps trying to temper the precipitous pizzazz.
“I told Kasey the other day that he has had some success,” Evernham says, “but really, he ain’t done nothin’ yet.”
Evernham’s grammar is usually a lot more polished. The veteran nurturer of young talent, a sophisticated motivator, is making a point.
“He has sat on some poles [four] and run second,” Evernham says. “It’s way too early to say, `Hey, he’s great.'”
But Evernham seems more and more like a guy in an old Western movie, clinging to the reins on a runaway buckboard.
A Gordon clone
The Jeff Gordon comparisons are impossible to ignore. Kahne came up through open-wheel racing on short tracks, racing for the same Steve Lewis team that launched both Gordon and Tony Stewart. In 2000, Kahne was introduced to Evernham by John Bickford, Gordon’s stepfather, who had guided Gordon’s path up through the ranks.
Even the winlessness in this rookie year–in an era when the last five rookies of the year have won races before winning the title–is analogous with Gordon, who didn’t win in his rookie season.
“The similarities,” says Gordon, “are that he’s a young driver who grew up in a similar background to what I did, and he has done a great job of working himself into a good ride his first year.”
The difference, Gordon cracks, “is that I wrecked a whole lot more race cars my rookie year than he has.”
Then there’s Evernham himself, even though he maintains his methods with Kahne are “completely different” than they were with Gordon, “because I don’t work with Kasey that way. [Crew chief] Tommy Baldwin does. I’m not on the radio with Kasey. . . . We talk during the week, but I don’t coach him during the race.”
But during the week at the team complex in North Carolina, “I’ll point out certain things to him about racetracks,” says Evernham. “I talk to him about attitude, and keeping control, and things he has to watch out for.
“And for a lot of that,” Evernham admits, “I do go back to my experience watching Jeff go through.”
Kahne listens, and tries to maintain the level head Evernham demands, even though he says “Everything has gone to another level since the year started, and jumped out at us a lot quicker than we expected.”
Yet he had some inkling, on his first visit to the Evernham complex, that things could go this well, this quickly.
“I’ve surprised myself some,” Kahne says. “But coming into this season, meeting with Ray and meeting Tommy Baldwin and this whole team, and knowing what kind of people we had here, I knew that good things could happen.
“And once we started testing, and Tommy and I started working well together, it was like at any time we could win a race or run up front, and that’s how it has been ever since.”
Nearing top 10
Finishing in the top 10 in points wasn’t even a goal at the season’s outset for Kahne’s branch of the Evernham Dodge team that also includes veteran Jeremy Mayfield.
But going into the Tropicana 400, Kahne is 11th in points, 561 behind leader Jimmie Johnson, and he’s the top rookie in the standings. Should he be within 400 points after 26 races, he would qualify for the “championship chase,” a new sort of playoff system, in the final 10 events.
That would give him a shot at becoming the first driver in NASCAR’s modern (post-1971) era to be rookie of the year and overall champion in the same season.
Nearing the halfway point, “We’ve run really strong at times, and had our tough breaks at times as a rookie,” Kahne says, “and hopefully in the last half of this year we get on a roll and just keep getting better and better.”
If that happens, people might drop the “next Jeff Gordon” notion and think of Gordon as the prelude to Kasey Kahne.
Rookie standings
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1. Kasey Kahne 213
2. Brian Vickers 170
3. Scott Wimmer 163
4. Brendan Gaughan 152
5. Scott Riggs 145
6. Johnny Sauter 117
Last 20 rookies of the year
2003: Jamie McMurray
2002: Ryan Newman
2001: Kevin Harvick
2000: Matt Kenseth
1999: Tony Stewart
1998: Kenny Irwin
1997: Mike Skinner
1996: Johnny Benson
1995: Ricky Craven
1994: Jeff Burton
1993: Jeff Gordon
1992: Jimmy Hensley
1991: Bobby Hamilton
1990: Rob Morosco
1989: Dick Trickle
1988: Ken Bouchard
1987: Davey Allison
1986: Alan Kulwicki
1985: Ken Schrader
1984: Rusty Wallace
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