Kahne not concerned by engine issue

The Richard Petty Motorsports Dodge driver retired from the first race of the play-off last week during the early laps of the event due to an engine failure which his team determined was caused by a failing crankshaft.

Although the issue was the second one for Kahne during the year it was the first for him and his team during a race, and it came shortly after RPM announced it was switching to Ford power for 2010 following the acquisition of Yates Racing.

However Kahne does not believe in the conspiracy theories flying around relating his engine failure to his team's future move.

"I think that's pretty far fetched," said Kahne. "I think the group of guys that we have building these engines have always worked really hard so the #9 team has the best engine they can possibly build.

"So to have a failure like that was just a normal racing deal. It's disappointing but it never crossed my mind any of that stuff. That's too far fetched for those guys."

Kahne and his team-mates are now expected to switch between Dodge's latest specification R6-P8 engine and the previous R-5 for the remainder of the season. Kahne has won races with both of them this year, winning at Sonoma with the old version and later at Atlanta with the new one.

"Yeah, I think it's going to be back and forth between the two engines, just whatever they feel the most confident with reliability, the parts and pieces inside of it, how many laps and rotations each one of them have on them," said Kahne.

"They're going to keep us with the best reliable engines that they have, what they know about and the things they can they will and hopefully it will work out."

This weekend Kahne is back to the old R5 Dodge engine, as are his team-mates AJ Allmendinger and Reed Sorenson. However Elliott Sadler is running the new R6-P8 but he experienced an engine problem during qualifying.