Kahne off to best start ever

When Kasey Kahne is good at Atlanta Motor Speedway, he's really good. But when he's bad, he's really bad.
Kahne has four top-fives at Atlanta, including a win in 2006, in nine career Cup starts at the track. But he has three finishes of 35th place or worse in those nine races.
After a sixth-place at Las Vegas on Sunday, Kahne is third in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings, and is having the best start of his Cup career.
"It feels really good especially after the year we had last year," said Kahne, driver of the No. 9 Dodge for Gillett Evernham Motorsports. "This is the best we've ever started a season and I think it speaks a lot in regards to the changes that we made within the team during the last several months."
Elliott Sadler, Kahne's teammate, is in the top 10 in the Cup standings and Robby Gordon, who is working with Gillett Evernham Motorsports, is 21st in the Cup standings after NASCAR overturned its penalty against the driver after the Daytona 500.
Kahne credits his crew chief, Kenny Francis, and his team for the turnaround from a year ago.
"Last week's race in Las Vegas is proof that we've made some pretty big gains this off season," Kahne said. "We started pretty far back and even lost a lap but we were able to get back to finish sixth. I don't think that's something we could have done last year. Now we just need to get a win. We have a lot of momentum going right now and I'm just looking forward to getting to the race track every week."
Kahne was not feeling well during the race at Las Vegas and that carried over to the test at Phoenix earlier in the week. Kahne said he is feeling better, but as of Wednesday, he was still not 100 percent.
"I feel good. I actually didn't feel bad after the first couple days, but I was really tired," Kahne said. "I can get by on six to eight hours of sleep and feel good. I was getting 10 and 11 hours of sleep last week and I still felt tired. I think getting more sleep is helping and I'll be ready to go this weekend -- looking forward to it."