34th in owner points, Kahne feeling no pressure
FORT WORTH, Texas - Kasey Kahne is in a precarious position in the Nextel Cup owner point standings heading into this weekend's Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Kasey Kahne's No. 9 Evernham Motorsports team is in 34th, 27 points ahead of the 36th-place team, the Wood Brothers/JTG Racing entry driven by Ken Schrader.
But is Kasey Kahne feeling any pressure?
"Just pressure to run well, to get up front, not because of what we did here last year," said Kasey Kahne, who is the defending champion of Sunday's race. "We need to gain points and get back in the top 30 and top 20 and not have to worry about anything else than running well. That's where more of the pressure is."
Kasey Kahne said his Kenny Francis-led team still has confidence it can perform and crawl up the point standings.
"We know we can run up front," Kasey Kahne said. "The penalties at Daytona didn't help, but this just hasn't been our year so far yet. You can look at luck. You can look at mistakes. You can look at missing setups. We've had a little bit of everything, and I'm part of every one of those things.
"We'll keep working hard, keep working as a team. Nobody has got mad at me. I haven't got mad at them. We're just all trying to work together and make things right. When it happens we'll be strong."
Kasey Kahne said he spent the off-weekend getting rest and spending time with his family. He didn't think a lot about racing but said he found it "pretty easy to get refreshed."
"I haven't been down at all," Kasey Kahne said. "It was nice to have an off-week, but it didn't matter if Texas was last week or this week."
Kasey Kahne has one win and a second-place finish at Texas to go along with three DNFs for engine failures. He's hoping to turn his season around this weekend.
"We need to get it going," Kasey Kahne said. "I enjoy this place. It's tough, but we've got to take advantage of good tracks for us. This is one of them."
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