'Head's still in the right place' for Kahne rebound

For as bad as it feels to run as poorly as he has in recent months, Kasey Kahne isn't throwing in the towel.

"It's discouraging, but there's really nothing I've been able to do about any of those weeks, and that's even probably more discouraging," Kahne said of how it's felt. "That's the place that we've been. We broke two parts and crashed; we got taken out at the end of the Dover race – they were wrecking in front of us, and a car came across the track and ran me into the inside wall. And then Sonoma.

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"Not one of those situations could have changed. So, I don't know what you do differently other than work hard for the next race and do the best you can."

Kahne qualified fourth for Saturday night's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway, his first top five starting spot of the season. It is also his first top-10 start since the fourth race of the year in Phoenix. The effort, not surprisingly, felt good, Kahne admitted.

However, the real test comes Saturday night. Kahne acknowledges his No. 5's team biggest struggle has been performing through an entire race, as evidenced by his three top 10s in 16 races. In the last five weeks, Kahne has finished no better than 17th and has failed to finish four times.

Sitting 21st in points and winless since 2014, the conversation when Kahne's name is brought usually ends in people believing he's replaceable. Others have even gone as far as to speculate Kahne will be out at Hendrick Motorsports by the end of the year.

"There's really nothing I can do about that," was Kahne's response. "I have a contract with Hendrick through next year. But at the end of the day I don't care [about] contracts, how all that works, I just want to perform, and I want to run well. And I know that I still can because it's a passion that I have, and it's all I think about."

How much Kahne focuses on performing was quite evident during his interview after qualifying. Kahne wasn't interested in entertaining the rumors about his future other than to say he wants to be in a good situation.

"I want to be wanted, and I want to perform," Kahne said. "I want to race well; I just work hard every week. I'm part of the team, I do everything I can to try to do a better job. I listen to criticism from my guys; I criticize when that needs to be done in that direction, and we work hard to go into the next race.

"The problem is we don't perform as well as we need to and we just need to figure that side of things out. I think everything else is really good. I have a great relationship with everybody on my team, including [crew chief] Keith [Rodden]. Every one of us, we like each other, we get along, but we don't perform for the entire race on Sundays like we need to and we just keep digging into that every week."

Unfortunately for Kahne, this season is not the first time he's experienced the ups and downs of racing. But Kahne knows that with every obstacle there's also something to learn, and lately he's found he still has the desire to race.

"If I was to wake up in the morning and not feel like racing or not have the urge to do my debriefs and call in and be part of the deal and try to get better, then I probably know time is about up," Kahne said.

"But I actually still think about [racing] non-stop and try to understand why we don't run good and how we can run better, how I can do a better job. That's all that I want and all that I think about. There's challenges for sure, but my head's still in the right place, and I think that's a big part of running well and getting things turned around."