DOVER, Del. -- Richard Petty Motorsports driver Kasey Kahne was long gone from Dover International Speedway's garage area Sunday evening, whisked away from the Monster Mile surrounded by the positive vibes of his second consecutive top-10 finish.

But as daylight faded his No. 9 Dodge's crew chief, Kenny Francis, and his mechanics still surrounded their sixth-place car from the Autism Speaks 400, poking and prodding and pulling off parts as they prepared to go to a tire test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“

It was a good race for us. The new motor had plenty of power, which made the car fun to drive.

”

KASEY KAHNE

But as Kahne had been, Francis was just as enthused about the turnaround that continued Sunday for his team, still rebounding from an evil start to the season by edging a position closer in the standings to qualifying for the Chase.

With his come-from-mid-pack finish, which came a week after they finished seventh in the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600, Kahne moved from 15th to 14th in the driver standings, just 66 points out of a Chase spot halfway to the Race 26 cutoff at Richmond.

Sunday was Kahne's first race with Dodge's new R6 engine package, which Penske Racing has been using to good effect for the better part of the season. Kahne cited that, while Francis included a lot of other work by their RPM crew as the keys, which earned them a front-row start outside pole-sitter David Reutimann.

"We had a good car all day -- a solid top-10 car -- and there are three or four things we're doing that are different," Francis said. "Of course, the biggest thing is the new R6 Dodge engine they've come out with, and our motor shop has really worked hard to get this thing out there, they've accelerated their schedule and went above and beyond to get us a motor to try out, and I think it was definitely better, for sure.

"The guys in the chassis shop and the car shop and the assembly shop have all worked so hard on these cars to make them better. They've worked hand over fist to just make a nicer package and it's really paying off. You can really see it and we've even had guys coming up in the garage and saying they're really nice and we've done a great job -- a lot of little stuff that just makes the whole car cleaner, and losing a little weight here and there, trying to get our center of gravity down -- and I feel like we've caught up, so I'm really proud of all that."

But particularly at Dover, Francis said the new engine was critical.

"Our old engine, the R5, was good for a long time, but it just got behind the times and all these other motor shops and car companies came out with new stuff," Francis said. "We were just kind of behind on the bottom-end torque -- it just didn't accelerate as good. It made good top-end power, good horsepower, but the acceleration up off the corner was where we isolated that we needed some help, and this thing is specifically designed to be better, with a lot different intake manifold and head, and it should be a lot better in that area." (Continued)