NASCAR: Kasey Kahne is an Expert at Merely Sufficing

By ryanpritt on October 13, 2014

For those who preach that doing just enough to get by is a bad thing, take a look at what Kasey Kahne is doing in 2014. He’s turning doing just enough into an art form.

It shouldn’t be any surprise that one race from another elimination of four drivers, Kahne finds himself in eighth place and on the right side of the cut-off line by a single point ahead of Matt Kenseth. All the pressure that comes along with NASCAR‘s new Chase format would only seem to be magnified in that kind of position, especially with the chaos that will almost assuredly occur at Talladega on Sunday. But if there is one driver that’s equipped to handle such a spot, it’s Kahne.

Quite simply, no one has more experience with life on the bubble. Just two races away from the Chase field being finalized Kahne was on the outside looking in and dealing with a heavy load of criticism after his three Hendrick Motorsports teammates (Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.) had long since punched their tickets into NASCAR’s postseason. Somehow, someway, Kahne fended off Matt Kenseth on the second attempt at a green-white-checkered finish at Atlanta, to claim a victory and more importantly a spot in the Chase in just the nick of time. But even he explained after the race, being under the gun is something it seems he has grown accustomed to.

“I hate that it comes down to this, to Atlanta or Richmond just about every year for me, and sometimes we’re in and sometimes we’re out,” Kahne explained after the race. “I’m thankful at (Hendrick Motorsports) we’ve been in all three years now, but we have the pressure all the way to Richmond. But we made it again.”

So it wasn’t really a surprise that the struggles of Kurt Busch and A.J. Allmendinger at Dover (Busch finished 18th, Allmendinger 23rd) allowed Kahne’s 20th-place finish to be just good enough to advance from the Challenger round to the Contender round by a mere two points. Now with the Contender round one race from becoming the Eliminator round, which will whittle the current Chase field from 12 to eight, here is Kahne again in the same familiar position, one point to the good. This time, there are four drivers (Johnson, Earnhardt, Kenseth, and Brad Keselowski) that have combined for eight championships that should be more than willing to do whatever it takes to somehow advance on Sunday.

If Johnson and/or Earnhardt can’t make up the difference this weekend (Johnson and Earnhardt occupy the bottom two spots and are both 26 points back of Kahne) and Kahne can manage to avoid trouble and sneak in once again, he will have outlasted a pair of his Hendrick teammates that have combined for six wins this year. It would be quite a story, considering the perception that Kahne was the weak link on the team that seemed to be the consensus throughout most of the year.

Ask many in the know when it comes to NASCAR who they would want in a one-race scenario and many would say Johnson, Keselowski, Kyle Busch, or maybe even Gordon. But if Kasey Kahne can drive the No. 5 through another round of the Chase on Sunday under that amount of pressure, his name has to start coming up in those discussions.

Ryan Pritt is a NASCAR writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on twitter @RPritt or add him to your network on Google.