Kahne hopes for Atlanta rebound

Last year Kahne won six races en route to making the Chase, leading his rivals in number of wins during the season.

However this year has seen a tough start of the season for the 26-year-old. He crashed out at Las Vegas having started from pole position and was halted by engine problems at Fontana earlier.

His best result so far this season has been the seventh place he achieved in the season opening race at Daytona, where he also had the bad news of a suspension to his crew-chief Kenny Francis.

"Really, I feel like we're fast. I feel like we could have three top tens," Kahne said. "I made a mistake, I had an engine problem. That's just racing; that's the way it goes once in a while.

"It's still early in the year, so I don't feel like we're in - we're in a little hole, but we can dig ourselves out of that pretty quickly.

"We just have to get everything together and make the right decisions. We've got the speed; we've shown that. We've been up front every single race so far. I'm not worried.

Kahne is looking forward to having his crew-chief back in two weeks' time, although he states the four-race ban has not sidelined him from his normal day-to-day work at the shop.

"He makes the 9 car so good. I mean, he's a huge part of what we do every week, whether he's on the pit blocks or not.

"I can't wait to get him back at Bristol, but right now he's still doing everything he normally would do, he's just not on the pit blocks and not talking to me on the radio."

The Evernham Motorsports driver sees the opportunity to rebound this weekend at Atlanta, a track which should suit his Dodge - as past results prove.

"Yeah, it should be [suitable]. I mean, we had a pretty decent car in Vegas and just didn't turn out the way we wanted to late in the race. But Atlanta is a good track for us.

"We've always seemed to run pretty solid at it, and we're making some adjustments with our car this week, and I'm going to make some adjustments hopefully to finish the race. Hopefully it'll be good."

Kahne won at Atlanta Motor Speedway a year ago and has finished four times in the top five in only six starts at the track.