Kasey Kahne had a disappointing end to his NASCAR career, but friends and former teammates fondly recall his 15-year tenure.
“Kasey is a really tough competitor, and drove the car hard, and gave it 100 percent all the time,” former crew chief Kenny Francis said. “He was one of the good guys in the sport; one of the nicest guys around. I hope everybody knows and understands he’s such a good guy, down to earth, as good a person you’d ever want to meet. For all the wins and success, and all the tough times we’ve been through, he’s just a great guy.”
Kahne announced his intention to retire in August. While acknowledging he had not been as competitive as he desired over the last few years, Kahne also spoke of wanting to spend more time with his family. Tanner, Kahne’s son, turned three in October.
Except, Kahne didn’t get to finish the season. Lingering dehydration issues reappeared on Labor Day weekend, and the effects forced Kahne out of his car. He tried to earn medical clearance to return for the final few races by testing at Charlotte Motor Speedway, but to no avail. Kahne ran 25 of 36 races in his last year.
“I was surprised, but not surprised,” Ray Evernham said of Kahne’s retirement. “I knew he wasn’t totally happy with everything that was going on; I know how much he cares about family and his other forms of racing. In some ways, I’m really sad because I’ve always thought Kasey had way more potential than we were able to realize with him, both myself and Mr. Hendrick.
“I’m [also] happy for him. It takes a lot of guts to stand up and follow your heart and walk away from something everybody tells you [that] you should be doing to do something that you want to do. I really admire him for that.”
For a driver who came into the sport with a bang, Kahne went out without even a whimper – hardly a thought on the final weekend of the year. Ask about him though, and there is plenty to unpack about Kahne’s career, character, and NASCAR legacy.
The Evernham Era
Kahne’s Cup career started with a lawsuit. After two seasons of competing in what is now the Xfinity Series driving a Ford, Kahne was snatched up by Dodge owner Evernham going into 2004. He inherited the No. 9 from Bill Elliott, prompting Ford to sue him for what it viewed as a breach of contract for switching manufacturers. The courts dismissed the claims.
Although winless in his first season, Kahne did grab Rookie of the Year honors by finishing 13th in the overall standings with an impressive 13 top-10 finishes. It didn’t take long for one question to dominate headlines: When will he win?
“The cars of that era suited him, with the crazy bodies and the offset and the way the aero worked,” Evernham said. “I think when Kasey came in, those cars may have suited him more than they suit the other guys, and he was fast. We won a bunch of races; we should have won more races with him. It was his time.”
Kahne finished second five times in 2004, and then once more in 2005 before claiming his first win. Starting from the pole at Richmond Raceway, Kahne was dominant, leading 242 laps on his way to victory at the Chevy American Revolution 400.
“When he first got here, he was very shy,” said Tommy Baldwin, who was Kahne’s crew chief in 2004-05. “He was new at it, so he didn’t know really what to expect – he just got in the thing and drove the wheels off it. We were fortunate enough in the beginning [that] we were fast 90 percent of the places we went to.
“Unbelievable talent… It was fun. It was fun showing up knowing you were one of the cars to beat, and then having all the tools.”
Kyle Busch, who entered the series in 2005, remembers Kahne’s early years.
“Kasey was a fierce competitor in the Evernham days,” he said. “I remember the No.9 Dodge every week going on the racetrack and being fast, and all of us chasing them and wondering what they had going on.”
Beginning with the final race of the ’05 season, Kahne was paired with Kenny Francis, beginning a partnership that lasted through all but five races between then and 2014. The duo exploded with success in 2006, winning six races and finishing eighth in points – at the time, a career-best for Kahne.
“We went through building up an organization at Evernham Motorsports together,” Francis said. “The beginning when we ran so good, we won a lot of races that first year together, and Kasey got everybody’s attention. He’d been kind of a up and coming star two years prior to that, so to hit on all eight [cylinders] and run so good in 2006 and win a bunch of races was probably one of the standouts.”
Through the 2010 season, Francis and Kahne had 10 points-paying wins and a victory in the 2008 All-Star Race – an event he’d earned his entry into via a fan vote. His popularity wasn’t a surprise, for as successful as Kahne was on track, his blue eyes and boyish good looks captured plenty of female attention off it, prompting sponsors like Allstate to take advantage with comedic commercials.
Kasey the Kind
Kahne’s story cannot be told without acknowledging his reputation. A recurring theme that appeared when Kahne’s name was mentioned across the paddock is that he was one of the good guys.
Elliott Sadler was Kahne’s teammate when Sadler arrived at Evernham in 2006, and remembers how welcoming Kahne was even though “that was his team.” At 31, Sadler was becoming a journeyman driver in the series while Kahne, then 26, was becoming a face of the sport. The two were teammates from 2006-10, which included tumultuous transitions into Gillette Evernham Motorsports, and then Richard Petty Motorsports. Sadler and Kahne became such good friends away from the track the two eventually built houses next to each other.
“Funniest thing about Kasey, he’s like a light switch,” Sadler said. “He was so caring and funny and kind of quiet sometimes, but he’d get a little courage going every once in a while, and get pretty loud, and he was always a good guy to be around if you’re having a beer somewhere. But when we were at the racetrack, he knew how to flip a switch, and he was a fierce competitor. You could tell how focused he was, especially when he and Kenny Francis were together. … Wanted to win. Took it very hard when he didn’t, or didn’t run as good as he thinks he should.
“Really good guy. I told him the other day, I liked him as a teammate, but I loved him as a neighbor. If we had bad days on Sunday, we were OK by Monday night. We had already gotten back to loving life in a good way and keeping each other cheered up.”
Busch was one of many to wish Kahne well while also saying he enjoyed competing against him.
“I’m sure we’ve battled for wins here and there on both the Xfinity side and the Cup side,” Busch said. “We’ve also battled for 15th-place finishes and ended up crashing each other a few times. But he’s always been a respected competitor, and one that everybody respects out there on the racetrack.
“You tend to try to not get into him, but you do make mistakes, we’ve all done that, and I’ve done [it] with Kasey. Most notably a couple years ago, when I think it was three times we ran into him and crashed every time. Certainly, I’m sure, he probably feels like he’s still behind on that of getting me back, but overall, it’s been fun over the years.”
Jimmie Johnson also spoke highly of his battles with Kahne over the years. The seven-time champion went as far as to say Kahne, while driving for Evernham, made him a better driver.
“My strong tracks were also his strong tracks – Charlotte is the first one that comes to mind,” Johnson said. “We had some awesome duels. Along my journey of becoming a multi-time champion, he’s one of the guys that’s helped me dig deeper and find more within myself. He’s been a great friend. I certainly just want the best for him. It’s great to see him as a father. The friendship side, that piece is probably what I will hold onto the most. But, along the way, he did make dig deeper than I’ve dug before, and make me stronger.”
Given the amount of time they spent working together, Kahne and Francis naturally became friends as well. Francis described their relationship, built on mutual respect, as “good as friends can be.” When the two recently saw each other, Francis told Kahne that everything he [Francis] has is because of him.
A winner, but not a champion
The list of drivers who have won in all three national series is only 31 names long. The list of those who have multiple wins in all three series is even shorter. Kahne is not only on both lists, but ninth on the latter.
In 529 Cup starts, Kahne won 18 races. In his 215 Xfinity starts, he won eight times. He went five wins for six Truck Series starts. From the All-Star Race, a Daytona qualifying race, to Bristol, Sonoma, Darlington, Charlotte, and the Brickyard, Kahne proved himself to be a wheelman.
Rick Hendrick bought in. The 12-time champion car owner signed Kahne nearly two years before he had an open seat. Hendrick remembers talking to Johnson, Jeff Gordon, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. about hiring Kahne, which everyone agreed needed to happen.
“They respected his ability as a driver, and everyone liked being around him,” Hendrick said. “I believe in the ‘fit factor’ – working with people who handle themselves the right way, and embrace the culture of the team. Kasey checked all those boxes for us, and he was tremendously talented and marketable. It was a great fit.”
Kahne, along with Francis, arrived at HMS in 2012. In their first season, they had four pole awards and two wins, ending up fourth in the championship fight. Hendrick thought the sky was the limit.
“Absolutely,” he said. “He and Kenny really hit the ground running when they came in. The fact that they’d worked together for so long and already had great chemistry was a huge benefit. The team won two races, but they could have easily won four or five that year.”
Yet four would be Kahne’s win tally across his next five seasons with the organization. After coming in hot, the team’s performance became inconsistent, and the highest Kahne finished in the points after that first season was 12th. The six-year relationship between Kahne and HMS ended after 2017, and with it went Kahne’s best chance to win a NASCAR championship. By the time health issues forced him out of the car at Leavine Family Racing, Kahne was 27th in points with just one top-10 finish.
“It’s always the goal to win championships, but so many things have to fall the right way,” Hendrick said. “We know that from experience, having been on both sides of it. I think at times we weren’t at our best as an organization, but Kasey did a great job and had a lot of highlights. Winning at the Brickyard was something I’ll never forget. Sharing that moment with him was so special.”
Should Kahne have been a champion? He had the potential and at times, the equipment.
“It just didn’t work out,” said Francis. “Championships are hard to win, and we just never quite put all the pieces together to do it. We got close one year. In ’06, probably one of our better years, we were really good on the intermediates, but we weren’t quite as well-rounded to excel on short tracks and road courses and stuff. And it was a little bit different game back then than it is now, with the format of the playoffs. It’s hard to say why [we fell short]; I’d have to go back and really look at all the results again to remind myself what happened, but we did have some success.
“I tell you, probably our best year – and no one even noticed – was when we were with Red Bull [in 2011]. We weren’t in the playoffs, we didn’t make it that year, but I think we darn near accumulated enough points, or did, to end up third or close to Tony [Stewart] and Carl [Edwards] that year.”
Kahne’s stop at Red Bull was in his gap year before joining Hendrick, and he did indeed earn the third-most points over the season’s final 10 races. During that span, Kahne also pulled off an improbable win in Phoenix.
“So, we just never quite put it all together at the right time to do it,” Francis continued. “Then you look at turmoil with the Gillette thing, and moving to Ford, and then to Red Bull… Hendrick was definitely, that first year, we felt pretty good about it, and even in ’13, we had a pretty good year going right up until the playoffs. So I don’t know how to really explain it why we never quite put it all together. Certainly, wish we had. We still had a good run, even though we didn’t.”
Asked if the lack of a title would tarnish Kahne’s legacy, Evernham replied, “I think a championship is great, no doubt, but there can only be so many champions in any sport. There are certainly a lot of good players and drivers. You look at guys like Mark Martin, and people like that who were certainly great enough, and I’m sure in Kasey’s mind it makes him feel like it hinders him. But in the end, he ended up exactly where he should have been. He won a lot of high-speed races, he won Indy, and he made the Chase for the Championship several times, but the championship just wasn’t in the cards.
“I look at the champion now, and it’s not the same thing. Being a champion today, it comes down to sometimes a roll of the dice in one race. It’s not the same [as] where you beat everybody up all year long and become the champion; it’s a different deal. So the fact that he didn’t become a champion… I think he definitely had the potential to do that, but who knows? Why didn’t Mark Martin become a champion, or some of the other great drivers we had?”
Kahne’s reputation as a clean driver and good guy has already been proven, so would he have benefited or succeeded even more if he’d been a jerk? Evernham chuckled. He and Kahne used to argue a little, and Evernham had to sit him down a few times to talk about radio control.
“He was vocal on the radio, and sometimes would lose his focus and [we] would have to rein him back in,” Evernham said. “I think on the racetrack, he is one of those guys, almost like a Martin Truex. Kasey was never aggressive enough on the racetrack to where he would put someone in danger other than himself, or cause a wreck. He’d be aggressive enough to spin out and crash a car alone; he crashed some of mine doing that. Kasey was very respectful of other drivers, and I think that comes from his open-wheel background to where if you’re not respectful in driving a sprint car, you could hurt somebody or worse. I think he carried that through his career.
“There were times where I felt like people used him up on the racetrack and he didn’t push back hard enough, but that’s his nature. As I said, he’s a very outwardly quiet person, but inwardly he’s very intense. I would like to see him yell and scream more at other people, not on the radio, but he’s very intense, about what he does – but he keeps a lot of it to himself.”
Back in August Kahne said the end of his career would be satisfying despite what it lacked.
“To me, I’ve won 20 Cup races – it says 18, but that All-Star Race was just as hard as the others,” he laughed. “The [Daytona qualifying] 150 I had to beat Tony, and that was just as hard as the others. Hey, I would love to win a championship. I would love to have 30 race wins. But that didn’t happen, and I’m fine with that. I feel like the things that did [happen] have been great. I got to basically make a run and live in an awesome time in NASCAR until now, and it feels great to be a part of NASCAR.”
Legacy
Kahne didn’t go out on top. There was no celebration for him at the awards banquet in Las Vegas. Gifts didn’t pile up from racetracks around the country.
In a way, perhaps it was fitting. Kahne was never one to seek out the spotlight. Now that he’s gone, however, he leaves plenty behind.
“The thing that he leaves behind is the fact that a young kid made it,” Evernham said. “That he and his brother and sister at 15, 16 years old left Washington and rented an apartment in Indiana to drive sprint cars, and he showcased talent, and that he made it on talent and ability, and that he was fast. There’s not anyone who is going to tell you that Kasey Kahne was not fast.
“He did his deal, accomplished what he thought he could accomplish, and then he knows he’s not going to accomplish any more than that in the world as it is today, and he’s going to dedicate his time to his family and his son. I really admire that.”
John Propst is now the vice president of innovation and racing development for NASCAR, but he worked with Kahne when the two were at Red Bull. Propst said he has a “ton” of respect for Kahne.
“He has been a first-class driver for many years, and earned a large fan base thanks to a great personality and excellence on the racetrack,” Propst said. “I was lucky to see his passion for the sport on a first-hand basis, and our season together was a highlight for me. I wish Kasey the absolute best in this next chapter.”
Kahne was thrown a surprise retirement party late last week. It was another chance for folks to remind him how much meant and accomplished.
Baldwin offered a definitive answer on Kahne lacking a championship, an answer that also seems to put Kahne’s career in perspective.
Said Baldwin, “He’s won 18 races. Rookie of the Year. Made a lot of money. Got a lot of friends. I don’t think he’s done that bad.”