Kasey Kahne Sets His Sights on a Texas Sweep

Kasey Kahne

Statesville, NC (October 31, 2005) – Kasey Kahne looks to become the first NASCAR Busch Series driver to post a season sweep at Texas Motor Speedway in Saturday’s O’Reilly Challenge.

After starting from the 25th position, Kahne led 47 laps on his way to a thrilling .304-second win over Greg Biffle in the April event at Texas Motor Speedway. He returns to Texas this weekend driving the No. 6 Hellmann’s® Dodge, looking to score his third Busch Series win of the season and the second for his Nextel Cup team owner, Ray Evernham.

This is the first year the series will compete twice at Texas Motor Speedway and if Kahne gets back to Victory Lane on Saturday, he'll be the first driver in the record books to sweep both Busch Series events at the track.

In four career NASCAR Busch Series starts at Texas Motor Speedway, Kahne has one win, one top-five and two-top-10 finishes with one DNF.

"I’m really looking forward to going back to Texas in the Busch car,” said Kahne. “I wanted to race in this event so much, that I asked Ray (Evernham) if he would let me drive it even though he had tentative plans to put another driver in the car. I just knew this was one race I wanted the chance to go back to with my Evernham Motorsports team behind me. I told Ray if he put me in the car he wouldn’t be sorry.”

Kahne has two NASCAR Busch Series wins this season, the second of which occurred in an exciting finish last month at Kansas Speedway. The Kansas win was a first in many ways - it was the first win for Evernham Motorsports Busch Series program, a first win for Trip Bruce as a Busch Series crew chief and a first win for the team’s sponsor, Unilever, which entered the sport as primary sponsor in 2004.

Bruce joins Kahne in his excitement on returning to Texas.

“This is a race that we have had circled on our calendar for the last six months,” said Bruce. “We are taking the same car we competed with at Charlotte and we have made some improvements to the chassis and set-up that we think will help us find some of the speed we were missing in races at Lowe’s and California. There will be some stiff competition this weekend but as long as we are on top of our game I think the Hellmann’s® Dodge is going to be tough to beat.”