LONG POND, Pa. — Despite a plethora of race strategies that alternately tipped the scales in someone else’s favor on Sunday at Pocono Raceway, Kasey Kahne walked away with his second NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory in three races by taking the Pocono 500.
The fastest car indeed won the race, as Kahne won from the pole for his second points victory of the season and his third in four races counting the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
“It seemed like the hottest race of the year,” Kahne said. “The track was hot. The line, the grooves, our Dodge Charger was super, super good. (The car) was just really fast. We got to work on it and kept making small adjustments and you could get either a touch tight or a little loose. On those last 60 laps, we were probably on the free side, but the front was really positive and when the front end turns as well as (our car) did, it’s just fun to drive.”

SPRAY DAY: Kasey Kahne celebrates his victory in Sunday's Pocono 500. (Autostock Photo)

The heat didn’t seem to bother Kahne that much: he led five times for 69 laps and was clearly the strongest car on the track after being forced to come from 38th following a pit-road miscue that saw three lug nuts get left off the left-front tire.
Team director Kenny Francis took the heat for the pit mishap, which occurred when he called off a four-tire stop in favor of just right sides.
“I got us in a pretty big hole there at the beginning of the race,” Francis said. “I tried to take two tires and call off a four-tire stop and I thought that I had the tire changer out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t realize that he already had some lug nuts off the left front. So, we had to come back in and take left sides (tires) that got us all the way in the back (38th position). Kasey (Kahne) did a great job driving it all the way back through the field. We had a really, really good car to be able to do that, so that was pretty impressive for us.
“We really didn’t adjust on it much, just a little bit here and there. There at the end, I was finally relieved that we got back up front leading the race and then all kinds of crazy strategy started happening. I was like, ‘Man, what should we do now?’ So I started thinking again and fortunately it all worked out.”
Kahne shrugged off the misfortune and got down to business, carving his way to the front in relentless fashion.
“Yeah, when I left the pits, I was like, ‘Great call, Kenny way to go, two tires,’ because we came out second and I was like, ‘Man, perfect.’ And then he was like, ‘Well, you’re going to bring that back in, you’ve only got two lugs on the left front’ or rear or whatever. I never really said anything,” Kahne recalled. 
The victory was the ninth of Kahne’s career in 158 starts, but it wasn’t as easy as Kahne’s 3.702-second margin of victory over Brian Vickers might suggest.
After a restart on lap 182 of the 200-lap event, Kahne passed Dale Earnhardt, Jr. the next time by and got Vickers two laps later to take the lead for the final time.
Denny Hamlin ran third, followed by Earnhardt and Jeff Burton. Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Carl Edwards and Mark Martin completed the top 10.
Despite the strength of his Budweiser Dodge, Kahne needed a little help in the final stages to get the job done. He pitted on lap 175, just before the final caution of the day for Kyle Busch’s solo spin off turn two.
That put him near the front with a handful of laps remaining, on fresher tires and the fastest car on the track.
“That was huge,” Kahne said. “If we didn’t pit on 175, we wouldn’t have been third on that restart. We would have been 10th or 11th and that would have been tough to get back to the front in that short amount of time. So, it was just a perfect call when we pitted. We didn’t need to pit at that time, but that was Kenny’s strategy and it worked out.”
With both Earnhardt and Vickers on fuel-mileage strategies, Francis kept Kahne on a normal cycle of pit stops and let the strength of the No. 9 car make the difference.
Because of the fuel-mileage ploy, Vickers’s tires were 10 laps older than Kahne’s at the finish. Game over.
“I’m so proud of our guys,” said Vickers, who gave Red Bull Racing its best finish in the Cup series. “We needed tires. He (Kahne) had a lot newer tires, and that’s all we needed. We had a great car.”
Hamlin, who won both Pocono races from the pole in 2006, had a run on Vickers soon after the final restart, but couldn’t make the pass.
“I got to the 83 (Vickers), but as soon as we got there, he moved down into our line, and we couldn’t make any headway,” Hamlin said.