Sprint Cup N's & Q's: Banking 500

Kasey Kahne might have had the only car to really challenge Jimmie Johnson on the longer runs Saturday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway, but a late pit stop and a bad set of tires didn't let that situation play out.

"The tires we took on the last stop shook and didn't turn," said Kahne after the race in which he led 67 laps. "I guess that was our bad set for the night."

That didn't mean that Kahne was making excuses for coming up short with a third-place finish -- his best result since a win at Atlanta in September. Instead, he was stating the obvious.

"We were the best car at times, but the final run when it counted, we weren't," said Kahne. "Jimmie [Johnson] showed up and beat us all."

It seems that a mention in last week's N's & Q's provided a nice boost of momentum to Casey Mears again this week. (OK, maybe not...)

Anyways, Mears followed up an 11th-place finish last weekend at Auto Club Speedway with a 7th-place effort at LMS on Saturday night. LMS, of course, is the site of Mears' only career win in 2007.

Mears, though, was feeling that the finishes were finally starting to back up some strong race cars that didn't finish where they should have over the past few races.

"We've had some really strong runs over the last six races and we finally have the finish we deserve," said Mears. "We're really starting to click as a team and we're looking forward to carrying this momentum over to the final five races of the season."

Mears' teammate Clint Bowyer had the best night of the oft-struggling Richard Childress Racing group with a 6th-place finish -- a sign that the team is starting to turn the corner in terms of competitiveness. Unfortunately for Casey, though, team owner Richard Childress acknowledged this weekend that his No. 07 car is having trouble attracting sponsorship -- leaving the door open to the chance that Mears won't have a ride with RCR in 2010.

Current sponsor Jack Daniel's announced last month that they'll be leaving the sport at the end of the season.

The official stated attendance for Saturday night's Sprint Cup action at LMS was 105,000 -- a number that is dwarfed by the nearly endless grandstands around the 1.5-mile speedway.

But when you stop to think about the situation, it's not a big surprise that LMS was having trouble getting tickets sold to near capacity for the fall race. Not only was the weekend a cloudy, cold and often rainy mess, but the NASCAR Banking 500 was the third Sprint Cup event at the track this season when you count the Coca-Cola 600 and the Sprint All-Star Challenge.

Toss in the big NHRA weekend at the track and you're looking at a bunch of racing options that you're trying to get local fans to throw hefty amounts of money at to attend. Let's face it: this economy just isn't going to support such spending.

I'm not saying that the Charlotte market is oversaturated with racing or that the quality isn't there on the race track -- the end of Saturday night's race had me on the edge of my seat -- but that it's understandable that tickets aren't easy to sell at the moment.

News flash: Joey Logano is still, in fact, a rookie and a 19-year-old kid.

Just look at what Logano had to say after finishing fifth on Saturday night after a late-race duel with Jeff Gordon.

"I had a blast," said Logano. "Racing a world class champion race car driver like that, running door to door for a fourth-place finish -- that was a bunch of fun. It's still really cool to me. I'm still a rookie on this whole deal. To be racing Jeff Gordon, I never thought that day would happen."

It's kind of refreshing to know that he's still getting a kick out of turning laps with the best of the best, huh?

The top-five was Logano's best finish in the Sprint Cup Series since his win at Loudon in May.

Kurt Busch, fresh off a 10th-place finish at LMS, is starting to see a trend develop in NASCAR -- particularly in the first five races of the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

"You get into a marathon-type pace early on and then you have a 100-yard dash at the end," said Busch. "It's almost like clockwork."

Fortunately for NASCAR, they didn't have to endure any criticism for a phantom debris caution after Max Papis lost an engine latein Saturday night's race. That caution led to two more before a 20-or-so lap green flag stint to the finish.

Busch acknowledged that such a pattern makes it easier to know what a car will need to win at the end.

"The team that has the car to make that short run at the end is going to be successful," said Busch.

Based on their two Chase wins in 2009, it's apparent that Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus knew that beforehand.