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Kasey Kahne's fifth-place effort Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway earned his No. 9 team a cool $158,465. There's no denying he earned every penny.
Kahne was the most prolific passer during the 500-lapper, according to NASCAR's loop data, after making exactly 100 green flag passes for position -- 12 more than second-best Brad Keselowski.
Keselowski, though, finished 19th. For a better comparison to Kahne and his pass-happy, top-five run, Clint Bowyer finished fourth after making 27 fewer passes Saturday night.
Why did Kahne -- obviously with a good-handling race car -- have to work so hard to squeak out a top-five run?
It's simple: a pit road speeding penalty can really hurt.
Kahne started 11th on Saturday night, but during the race's first caution and pit stops, Kahne was assessed a speeding penalty on pit road. It wasn't just a minor violation, either.
"I got caught in like three or four segments and it was the same (speed) all the way around," Kahne said afterward. "We just missed (the pit road speed calculation) a touch there, but we worked all the way back."
Kahne took the restart at the tail-end of the pack, and by lap 75 he was 29th. 75 laps later on, Kahne had moved to 17th, and was finally in the top-10 by lap 275.
By lap 425, Kahne was scored fifth, then moved up to fourth before falling back to fifth.
"I really felt like I could challenge when we came out of the pits that final time and started eighth," Kahne said, referring to the race's final caution flag period that left 88 laps to go, "But the front tires just didn't work as good as they needed to."
WHO'S HOT: Well, seeing as Kyle Busch has three more checkered flags to his name since the last time we did this, can I go with anyone else? Nope.
WHO'S NOT: Again, it's the entirety of Hendrick Motorsports. For the fifth straight week, the team failed to record a top-five finish. That ties the worst five-race span for the organization since the middle of 2002.
NOTABLE: The last 50 laps of Saturday night's race were strangely free of drama. Kyle Busch pretty much held serve amongst zero cautions and just one driver -- Matt Kenseth -- moved ahead more than one spot.
Kenseth moved from 12th to 10th, while just eight other drivers advanced a single position. Dale Earnhardt Jr., though, was the biggest mover -- albeit negative -- when he dropped six spots in the final 50 circuits to 13th.
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