RICHMOND, Va. (May 3, 2008) It took three weeks of frustrating finishes, but Kasey Kahne finally had a Kasey Kahne-Style finish coming home 10th in the No. 9 Budweiser Dodge Charger at Richmond International Raceway. The car performed in the top-eight for most of the race, but it was Kahne’s overall prowess behind the wheel that propelled him to his fifth top-10 this season.

Kahne rolled off ninth and methodically began his march to the front. Within the first 30 laps, he cracked the top-five and was running fourth place with a car he described as "… loose center off". Following a brief caution period while running third on lap 67, Kahne brought the Budweiser Dodge down pit road for service. He had trouble exiting his pit stall, lost three positions and rejoined the race in seventh.

As the night wore on, Kahne said the car was becoming looser through the center of the turn because of changing track condition. Because the car was also slightly tight exiting the turn, Team Director Kenny Francis knew major adjustments were risky, but had to be taken if the No. 9 was going to challenge for victory. Major adjustments were made on a lap 221 pit stop. Not satisfied with running 12th, the Budweiser crew executed a lightning-fast pit stop putting Kahne back into the top-10.

Following a virtually incident free first half of the race, contact between Carl Edwards and J.J. Yeley on Lap 230 triggered a 14-car pile-up in Turn 3. Enough debris was strewn across the track that NASCAR displayed the red flag.

When the red flag was lifted 20 minutes later, Kahne began his ascent toward the front. Climbing to sixth on lap 245, he continued to fight a loose-handling racecar. Despite the condition, Kahne and the No. 9 Budweiser team never gave up. While unable to make up ground on the leaders, they were able to hold on through the final 100 laps and survive a green-white-checkered finish to place 10th.

"We were pretty decent tonight", Kahne said after the race. "We just couldn’t get the handling better. We could never make the car better than a 10th-place car. Our Budweiser Dodge was okay, but we needed it to be better than that. We ran in the top 10 for 390 laps, but just couldn’t catch the guys in front of us. Overall, it feels good to break away from the bad luck that we’ve had lately".

Kahne returned to the top-12 in the NASCAR championship point standings where he is now 12th; 50 points out of 11th.

Clint Bowyer scored the surprise victory after Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr., made contact on lap 398 allowing Bowyer to score the victory under the green-white-checkered finish. Denny Hamlin led a track-record 381 laps before surrendering the top spot to Earnhardt on Lap 383 after developing a slow leak in his right-front tire. Busch held on to finish second, followed by Mark Martin, Tony Stewart and Martin Truex Jr. to complete the top five.

Kahne and the No. 9 Budweiser team will return to action under the lights on Saturday, May 10 at Darlington Raceway. FOX will have live coverage of the Dodge Challenger 500 beginning at 7 p.m. ET. Motor Racing Network (MRN) will have radio coverage.