Kasey Kahne! NASCAR's new road racing king? Who'd have thunk? Can Ford keep him another year?

   Kasey Kahne: ready to break Ford's winless streak. On the pole for Sunday's Sonoma 350 (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
    

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   SONOMA, Calif.
   Kasey Kahne keeps carrying the freight for Ford, and last year's Sonoma winner – a surprise to runner-up Tony Stewart and just about everyone else here – is looking like one of the favorites for Sunday's Sonoma 350 too.
   Kahne beat Jimmie Johnson and Kurt Busch Friday for the pole. And whatever Kahne and his men have under his Ford, they apparently aren't sharing with the rest of the gang.
   Curiously, perhaps, the Ford Kahne is running here is the same car he won in last June with Dodge logos on it. Only the engine has changed.
   Just what qualifying really means at this 2-mile, 12-turn hilly course in the northern California wine country isn't clear. Yes, track position is important, because it's hard to pass. But then Ernie Irvan once came from dead last to win here.
    Kasey Kahne, road course master? Surprising.
   "I think it's just experience  --  You get better as a driver on these types of tracks, you learn the cars better, you learn the course better...and just having better race cars too," Kahne says. "I think the speed of the car the last couple of years here has been better than anything I've had in the past."
    And Kahne says his race setup is just as good: "In practice first thing we were in race trim, and we were second or third fastest.
    "It's a great car."
   
  

  Team manager Robbie Loomis (R), with Richard Petty. They'd like to keep Kasey Kahne one more year....(Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   A great driver too. Even though Kahne is looking for his first tour win this season, he won his 150-mile Daytona qualifier, he ran second last weekend at Michigan, and he's having pretty much a stellar spring, though a couple of DNFs (Daytona and Pocono), and problems at Bristol and Phoenix, have him mired 21st in the standings.
   And after qualifying Robbie Loomis, team manager for Kahne, raised the intriguing idea that Kahne might stick around with his team for one more season – "Wouldn't that really be nice? And it sure would help us out."
   Whether Loomis was just raising an idea or whether there might be more to the issue was not clear.
    Kahne has signed a contract with Chevy rival Rick Hendrick beginning with the 2011 season; however Hendrick and Kahne have given no indication of what their game plan for 2011 might actually be. There is speculation that Hendrick might 'farm' Kahne out to team owner James Finch for 2011. Owners are now only allowed four Cup teams, and Hendrick already has four, before adding Kahne.
   But Loomis did work for Hendrick for several years, with Jeff Gordon, winning the 2001 NASCAR championship.
   And team owner Jack Roush, who provides engines and engineering for the Loomis-Kahne-Richard Petty-George Gillett operation, has expressed interest in how Hendrick might deal with that whole dilemma....particularly in light of NASCAR's own ruling that just forced Roush himself to cut back from five teams to four.
   Regardless of how the Kahne situation might play out, the curious thing here is how did Kahne suddenly became such an amazing road course wizard.
  "I don't know," Kahne said. "Two years ago I couldn't pass here, and I was sliding around.
    "I don't think I'm any kind of wizard here. Turn 11 is pretty tricky for me. But the whole course, the way you lose grip in the slippery corners, and the way you lose grip going over those hills...."
    But Kahne made a believer out of Stewart last year here, outrunning him down the stretch in a flawless finish.
  
  

  Kyle Busch, stuck deep in the pack for the Sunday start, handles some TV work up on the hillside overlooking the race track (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

  
  The Infineon Raceway layout, by the numbers -- which drivers will have taped to their dash (Photo: Infineon Raceway)
  

   Friday's most disappointed: David Ragan, who spun in qualifying and will have to start at the rear of the field.
   Ragan wasn't the only one having difficulty getting grip.
   "I'm not sure what's up," Kurt Busch said, "because this new spoiler has added downforce everywhere we've been. This weekend the tire says the downforce is about the same, but it just feels like were running on four right-side tires right now."
   Few if any drivers made long runs Friday, so precisely data on the speed drop-off of the tires will remain a question. Drivers say they can get four to eight fast laps on the tires before they lose grip and speed dramatically; but at that point the tires, they say, hold constant.
   How to play that?
   While it's always nice to have speed, drivers and crew chiefs here seem to be more curious about race strategies, which may be different this weekend because of a soft and fast Goodyear tire and NASCAR's new green-white-checkered finishing rule, with the possibility of three GWCs. Teams typically look first here at making the 219 miles on two gas stops. However depending on how much faster fresh tires might be, that strategy might change. Plus the added miles of several GWCs could make gas mileage a wild card.
   Sunday's race here isn't the only road course race NASCAR is playing this weekend. Brad Keselowski, Carl Edwards and Paul Menard are jetting over to Wisconsin's Road America for Saturday's Nationwide race, where practice opened Thursday.
   Double duty is tough enough, much less this commute...and on top of that no one has ever run Road America before.
   "The biggest difference," Keselowski says, "is the track. 
    "The more I think of it, everything is different. The only thing that is the same -- the shift lever and the race car. 
    "The way the cars drive is different.  The way that you sit in the cars is different.
    "There's way more horsepower with the Cup car.  So Sonoma takes a lot more finesse, and you can't get up to full throttle all the time. 
    "Road America is much faster.  Your braking has to be really smooth. 
    "Road America just takes a lot of guts.  You drive it off into a corner at 180 mph, and then slow it down to 70 or 80 mph on the next one. And that's not easy.
    "It's a huge challenge.
    "I'm not going to kid you, it's not easy." 
    But then Keselowski and Edwards are 1-2 in the Nationwide standings, so they have to make the commute.
    Mattias Ekstrom, filling in this weekend here for Brian Vickers, is also facing a huge challenge – he's never raced NASCAR stockers before. But the European road racer is talented.
    "It's always difficult to start a new format," Ekstrom says. "It's a good experience.  But there are no tire heaters, and the tires are different, and the cars are different.
       "The motor here has like 900 horsepower, and we (in European racing) have nearly the half.  And these cars are way more heavy.
     "And then we have a lot more downforce than this.
    "The biggest challenge – you're used to having a lot of data to analyze things.  Here, it's different:  You more or less get what you have, and drive and do everything by feeling. 
    "In Europe you have data and engineers....Here it's more about passion and feelings.
    "You need to have a special quality to drive in NASCAR, that’s for sure. I have a big respect for the regular NASCAR drivers.
    "It will be interesting to see how far off I can come."
 

  
   
Friday's qualifying results for Sunday's Sonoma Toyota/SaveMart 350 at Infineon Raceway

   
   

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   Kasey Kahne: at one point he had at least three of the four wheels up in the air, in a wild qualifying sprint (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)