Kahne Keeps Rising

Kasey Kahne’s resurgence in the Chase for the Nextel Cup continued Saturday night as he won the Bank of America 500 in a late duel with Jimmie Johnson.

But the relentless Jeff Burton stayed on top of NASCAR’s playoff standings with a third-place finish, despite a severe vibration in his car during the late laps.

The win was Kahne’s sixth of the season, most on the tour, and followed a surprise second-place finish at Talladega, Ala., last week that lifted him from the bottom of the 10-driver standings.

In two races, Kahne has gone from 273 points behind Burton to 160 back. After the fifth of the 10 Chase races, he is eighth in the standings, but two of the next three races come on tracks where he has won this season, Atlanta and Texas.

“We’re making up ground,” Kahne said. “We lost a lot at the start” of the Chase. “Things happened. But now we’ve cut it almost in half.”

Kahne passed Johnson with 27 laps to go after Johnson had restarted from a caution on worn tires. Johnson had seemed dominant in the middle stages of the race until he fell behind when an untimely caution caught him just after a pit stop.

But Kahne’s Dodge was the strongest car for the most stages of the race, leading the most laps, 134 of the 336, at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished fourth and moved up one spot to fifth in the standings, 106 points behind Burton. But, “you can’t break him,” Earnhardt said of the points leader.

Jeff Gordon was the biggest loser of the evening when his Chevrolet blew an engine with 35 laps to go. Gordon had led twice and was running fourth when the engine failed. He dropped from seventh to 10th, 216 points behind Burton.

“It’s just not meant to be for us this year,” Gordon said.

He wasn’t the only veteran who felt fate denying him Saturday night. Mark Martin saw his hopes damaged for a championship in his 20th and last full-time Nextel Cup season during a wreck with 96 laps left.

“The championship is not really something that is meant to be for me, ever,” said Martin, who four times has finished second in the standings and has been in the running late in the season 11 times.

Even though he fell only one spot in the standings, from third to fourth, Martin went from only 10 points down to 102 behind.

Matt Kenseth maintained second place in the standings, but dropped from six to 45 points behind Burton after scrambling to a 14th-place finish.

Kevin Harvick moved up a notch to third, but dropped 89 points behind with an 18th-place finish.

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Ed Hinton covers auto racing for Tribune newspapers.