Kasey's, Kevin's and Tony's low- (or no-) win situations
No one is enjoying seeing the NASCAR spotlight on Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s future plans more than Kasey Kahne because that deflects attention from Kasey Kahne's dismal season.
Kasey Kahne won a Cup Series-high six races in 2006 -- four of the first 15 -- and qualified for the Chase for the NASCAR Nextel Cup. This season, he is winless and 26th in points.
He's not alone in going backward. Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick won five times each in 2006; Kevin Harvick has one victory this season, Tony Stewart none. At least Tony Stewart is sixth in points and Kevin Harvick is eighth.
So why the dearth of victories? After all, it's not as if these guys forgot how to win during the offseason.
Kasey Kahne
The four-race suspension of crew chief Kenny Francis for infractions during Daytona 500 qualifying cast a pall over Kasey Kahne's early-season efforts. It didn't help that Evernham Motorsports was behind the curve in developing and testing the Dodge Avenger version of the Car of Tomorrow.
Add to those problems owner Ray Evernham's admission that the team took the wrong direction aerodynamically with the new Dodge nose and you have a recipe for the struggles Kasey Kahne and teammates Elliott Sadler and Scott Riggs have experienced.
Kevin Harvick
Kevin Harvick's fall-off after the euphoria of his Daytona 500 victory is a mystery.
Perhaps the folks at Richard Childress Racing expected the roll that began in 2006 to continue unabated and grew complacent. Whatever the case, Kevin Harvick bottomed out after a fire in the second Car of Tomorrow race, at Martinsville, destroyed his car and dropped him to a 41st-place finish.
The next week at Texas, he ran 29th and fell out of the top 12 for the first time in 2007. Since then, Kevin Harvick has clawed his way back into Chase eligibility, but he wasn't in contention for a victory until last Sunday at Sonoma. The No. 29 team just isn't clicking the way it was last year.
Tony Stewart
It's a minor miracle that Tony Stewart has yet to win a race in 2007.
For 289 laps, he had the dominant car in the first Car of Tomorrow race at Bristol, but problems with a fragile throttle cable sent him to the pits for repairs and cost him the win. Tony Stewart also looked like a winner at Atlanta before Jimmie Johnson's squeeze play out of Turn 2 relegated the driver of the No. 20 Chevy to second place.
Wrecks involving Kurt Busch also cost Tony Stewart two races he had a chance to win -- at Daytona and at Dover. More than anything, Murphy's Law has kept Smoke out of victory lane.
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