NASCAR: Five Drivers Looking Forward To 2016

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Kasey Kahne

Kasey Kahne and the No. 5 team want nothing to do with remembering the debacle that was the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season. After many believed that Kahne would be departing HMS after 2014, the team not only re-signed him but he entered 2015 as the driver under contract for the longest amount of time.

2015 was supposed to be the season where Kahne put it all together. The contract extension proved that HMS was behind him and it should have been enough to lift the weight of the world off of his shoulders and launch him into some on-track success.

In the first 16 races of 2015, Kahne had 14 finishes of 17th or better. With 10 races left before the start of the Chase Kahne seemed like a lock to make the Chase on points if he didn’t manage to win a race, and that’s when things went bad quickly. Over the next 10 races Kahne posted five finishes outside of the top-20 and no finish better than 12th. The collapse caused him to miss the Chase and ultimately made his 2015 campaign a failure.

2016 needs to be better for Kahne and if you support the No. 5 team there is reason to believe that it will be. Kahne had four top-10 finishes over the last nine races of the season, something he hadn’t done since the beginning of the season. Kahne and the No. 5 team seemed to get their act together late and that will hopefully mean good things comes 2016.

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