Budweiser Racing Team Notes of Interest
Kasey Kahne and the No. 9 Budweiser Ford team return to Pocono Raceway for the second time in 2010 for Sunday’s Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500. The team has scored one win (June 2008), three top fives and five top-10 finishes in 13 previous starts at Pocono. They’ve also scored two pole awards, led 150 laps and have an average starting position of 8.3 and an average finish of 16.4.
When the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series teams competed at Pocono Raceway in June, Kahne qualified eighth and was headed toward a top-10 run when a last-lap accident relegated him to a 27th-place finish.
Kahne holds the track record in qualifying at Pocono Raceway with a lap of 52.164 seconds and a speed of 172.533 mph. He set the record speed on June 11, 2004 during his rookie season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.
In 13 starts at Pocono Raceway, Kahne has completed all but four laps of the 2,514 that have been run, giving the No. 9 team a completion rate of 99.8 percent at the 2.5-mile track.
Kahne will pull double duty at Pocono this weekend, competing in the first-ever NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event at the track in the No. 18 entry for Kyle Busch Motorsports. While Kahne has only two previous starts in the Truck Series, he found his way to Victory Lane on both occasions in November 2004 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway and Homestead-Miami Speedway.
With 20 races completed in the 2010 season, Kahne and the Budweiser team have earned one pole award, five top fives and seven top-10 finishes. Four of the seven top-10 runs of the season have come in the past six races, a span during which Kahne’s average finish is 10.5, despite a 36th-place result at New Hampshire Motor Speedway due to an engine failure.
Kasey Kahne discusses racing at Pocono Raceway:
What are the keys to success at Pocono?
“The straight-aways are so long, you need to get all of the speed down them that you can so your car can come off of turn three as fast as possible. I’ve always liked the uniqueness of the three different corners and the challenge that it presents to the teams to set up your car to be fast at each of the different ends.”
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