CONCORD, N.C. -- Sunday's race at Richmond International Raceway was highlighted by two top-five finishes for Hendrick Motorsports, and there was plenty to take away from another thrilling event.
KAHNE 'BUILDING' ON TOP-FIVE
Early in Sunday's race at Richmond, Kasey Kahne was concerned.
Riding high on the track, his No. 5 Mountain Dew Pitch Black Chevrolet SS made contact with the wall.
"I just missed a little bit and slid, hit the wall," he explained. "I thought I had wrecked my car pretty good, but it rubbed it. It was still really sharp the next corner and the corner after that. I knew we were OK at that point."
From there, he pushed toward the top five, finding it on Lap 79, and stayed at or near it for the remainder of the race.
A week after finding the top five with less than 50 laps remaining at Bristol but ultimately finishing 17th, Kahne was proud to have "finished it off" Sunday.
"We just stayed after it all day," he said. "We had a little bit of struggles early in the run, the first 10 laps, then at the end of the race we didn't have that struggle at all. I thought that was the best we've taken off all day on a 40-lap kind of dash there at the end. We needed that."
He credited the success to the No. 5 team, from crew chief Keith Rodden's in-race tuning to the pit crew's speedy stops throughout the event.
"We had a strong car," he said. "The adjustments were great. The pit stops on pit road, I was either even or gaining spots all race long. My pit team is unreal right now, for sure."
The fourth-place finish was his best of the season, and it came two weeks after a top-10 at Texas and a week after a strong run at Bristol, even if the result didn't show it.
“It's nice to have three solid weekends," he said, "and we'll keep building from here."
'PERFECT' TIRE
If Sunday's race at Richmond looked fun on television, it was a blast inside the actual race cars.
"Today you could find grip across the entire track," Kahne said. "When you have a tire and a racetrack that gives you those capabilities, it makes for an exciting, fun, great race. I enjoyed every bit of it today. I enjoyed this car, the package we have this year. It's the best it's been in a long, long time. The track today was awesome."
Jimmie Johnson -- who finished third -- echoed Kahne's sentiments, crediting Goodyear for the "perfect" tire for day racing at the track.
"We had multiple lanes that laid the rubber in the racetrack and we didn’t have all those marbles build up on the outside where it really limited your opportunities up high," he explained. "It was fun. The cars were slipping and sliding; there was a ton of fall-off."
TRACK TIGHTENS UP
Long green-flag runs defined most of Sunday's race at Richmond, and the Hendrick Motorsports teammates took advantage.
With 90 laps remaining, all four Hendrick Motorsports teammates were racing inside the top 10.
"I enjoyed the long runs," Johnson said. "I really like sizing-up guys that I’m racing with and seeing how that works out. And then, at the end we had a bunch of short runs."
It was those short runs that made the end of the race tougher for Chase Elliott and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished back-to-back just outside of the top-10.
“We got tight at the end," Earnhardt said. "I didn’t like restarting on the bottom -- that hurt me a little bit. We just couldn’t get the car to turn at the end."
The driver of the No. 88 Mountain Dew DEWcision Chevrolet SS said the car was handling well through the middle of the race, and No. 88 crew chief Greg Ives made great adjustments to push him into the top five with 90 laps to go.
But the multitude of cautions down the stretch hurt the cause.
"All of those debris cautions hurt us," Earnhardt said. "We didn’t have good short-run speed. We needed the long runs and didn’t really need that. Those last several cautions kind of tightened the track up on me a little bit. I just wish it would have gone green, but it didn’t.”